The Warehouse Is Empty, But All Pearls, No Swine Still Shine In The Sun...

Aaaaaaaaaand this is where I finally run out of stock in terms of All Pearls, No Swine. This volume was compiled sometime last year, as I slowly tried to regrow the wealth of APNS volumes I had when I started this lil' blog adventure. Then again, that was *checks notes* 30 months ago, so even if I was saving up on APNS in the last months, posting about one and a half (statistically speaking) per month, the stock is finally at zero. Fear not, the archives are still full of stuff, but I have to compile and knock this stuff in shape again. Off to work, lazy ol' OBG!

Meanwhile, enjoy All Pearls No Swine Vol. 38, in which we visit the 90s for a third time. And boy, is this volume 90s. As with the other volumes, the 90s - one of the decades I lived through as an active music listener - is less about the musical archaeology that defines the 70s-set volumes, where I dig through tons of obscure and little known stuff to find the pearls. The 90s sets are a mix of some obscurities, chart entries that were and are maybe underappreciated and the occasional 'bubbling under' alternative rock track. In the case of this compilation, there are a lot of the latter ones. It's almost like a hipster hitparade kind of thing. We got James, Mazzy Star, The Mabuses, Compulsion and The Sundays, among others. Not to mention the mighty La's with the classic "There She Goes", for my money still the best jingle-jangle revival song of all times. 

Of the 'underappreciated chart entries' we could cite Martika, who followed up her breakthrough debut album with something more serious, which obviously meant collaborating with Prince, who used her lyrics to craft "Love Thy Will Be Done". Still a wonderful song and single, that was even a US top ten hit at the time but seems almost forgotten today, much like its singer. Dubbed the hispanic Madonna, when her self-titled debut with number one hit "Toy Soldiers" exploded in 1988, she walked away from the music industry in 1992 even before all the singles from follow-up Martika's Kitchen had been issued, citing a burnout and the pressures of fame. "Sailing On The Seven Seas" came out pretty much around the same time as "Love...Thy Will Be Done", and even became a Top 3 hit in the UK and a top ten hit in a number of European countries, while bubbling under in the US. Lead singer Andy McCluskey was leading a whole new group under the old Orchestral Manoeuvers In The Dark moniker, which didn't please everybody at the time, but it's a wonderful dance-rock stomper that deserves to be rediscovered.  

Another throughline for this volume: Great cover versions! Who doesn't love great cover versions? Here we got three: Sinead O'Connor's outstanding take on "Ode To Billie Joe", Mary Lou Lord's acoustic reinvention of Van Halen's "Jump" and The Afghan Wigs' groovy take on TLC's "Creep". 

On the vet watch in this volume: Alice Cooper, who sings the anthemic "Stolen Prayer" with its author Chris Cornell. Glenn Frey with the quite lovely "Brave New World", John York with the wonderful comp closer "Lady On The Highway" and Tom Waits with the ultra atmospheric and weirdly reassuring "Hold On". There's also the reformed Flying Burrito Brothers, by now in - I'm not joking - its 48th (!!!)  incarnation, trying to be hip with the alt country crowd by covering Son Volt's "Windfall" a mere two years after the original came out. [I'm not sure how many noticed, but I originally announced this song for APNS Vol. 34, the last 90s-set volume, in that volume's write-up and to my surprise find that there is a "Windfall" on that collection, but it's the Son Volt original. Huh. I mean great song, good for that volume - whose write up is now changed - but that's a weird mix up, as I originally only had the Burritos "Wiindfall" in my APNS 9Os folder]

So, you know, the usual: smorgasboard of diverse stuff, all good. Same as it ever was. As All Pearls, No Swine slide into an unknown future, enjoy this throwback to the 90s...

Let's Look At Poco's Inside...From The Outside

Part two of our Poco alt album project, with the direct follow-up - in terms of studio albums - to Poco's second album, recently reworked as You Better Think Twice. In the meantime, the second big shakeup of Poco - and it would it not be the last one - happened in between. In 1968 Poco (then Pogo) was the brainchild of Richie Furay and Jim Messina, who worked as a producer on the last Buffalo Springfield album Last Time Around. But by 1970 things had changed quite a bit. Richie Furay's worsening jealousy of all the more successful bands that had bypassed Poco and his tightening grip on Poco in terms of dominating the songwriting and decision-making had left Jim Messina really fed up, with the worsening tensions between the co-founders leading to them abandoning a planned follow-up album in the summer of 1970, instead focusing on culling a live album from their concets that would become the classic DeLIVEring. 

But Messina had made up his mind to leave the band, tired of the relentless touring as well as the terse discussions with Furay. He wanted to retire from road life and performing and go back into producing, a plan that was almost immediately scuttled when the work with his first client Kenny Loggins took an unexpected turn. But that's another story. Messina's exit from Poco was an uncommonly graceful one. Messina himself handpicked his successor, Paul Cotton of The Illinois Speed Press, and stayed on for a couple of weeks - with Poco as a six piece - to go on the road and teach Cotton the songs. He also had another graceful surprise for Furay in store, that we will get to later. 

As a newly reconstructed five-piece Poco finally went to work on their third studio album, with Cotton bringing, as planned, a harder-edged rock sound to the band, especially on the charging "Railway Song". Furay still dominated the songwriting, with six of the 11 original tracks rom his pen, including should-have-been classics "You Are The One" and "Just For Me and You". But Poco immediately became more democratic, with new arrival Cotton getting three songs and Timothy Schmit finally landing a song on an album, which even got the honor of becoming the title song. So, everything looked good for From The Inside...and yet, it wouldn't be Poco if it were easy. 

From The Inside was recorded in the Trans Maximus Inc. studios in memphis with Steve Cropper in the producer's chair, and the band was (in)famously unhappy with the recording and production. The control room wasn't immediately reachable from the studio recording space and the studio didn't have enough multitracks for the taste of the band. It's true that the sound of From The Inside is a bit unusual, a drier, more rustic sound than what the band was used to. If you really want to hear, say George Grantham's drumming, From The Inside is the album for you. But it's also true that this slightly swampier sound probably wasn't a good fit for the band, though only the odd rhythm and vocals of "Do You Feel It Too?" stick out as egregious. 

Unusual production or not, From The Inside is indeed a bit of a breakthrough, finally achieving and finessing the country-rock sound they were after on their first two albums, and came close to on DeLIVEring. This album, however, is not From The Inside. Call it an alternate look at the period. From The Outside In. It sort of picks up the (missing) pieces of the period, collecting a bunch of stray tracks from the period: Studio versions of "C'Mon" and "A Man Like Me" that were orphans from the abandoned third studio album, replaced by DeLIVEring, as well as a remix of Schmit's "From The Inside" and the aforementioned parting gift from Jim Messina, who does a lead vocal cameo on From The Outside In. As a surprise for  Furay and his wife for the baby shower of their first daughter, Messina and the band played "Lullaby In September". It's a little maudlin, but a beautiful goodbye gift of the gracious Messina. 

The rest of the tracklist is supplied by Live From Columbia Studios, an intimate record showcase for music executives, where the band played the majority of From The Inside songs. To fit in with the rest of the tracks, I got rid of the audience applause, so that From The Outside In works more or less as an alternate version of From The Inside, not to replace the real thing, but as an 'what if' companion piece. These live versions have a spontaneity and sprightliness that their studio counterparts lack and thus function as a different, more immediate look on these songs. By late 1971 Poco were a well-honed live act, and it shows in their playing here. From 1971 onwards they were launching what was easily the best part of their career. One which we will have a further look at in the next volume of our little Poco series, but for now, dive into From The Outside In, to see what the boys were up to in mid-to-late 1970 and early 1971. 

Are You Ready To Take A Dip Into Folly's Pool?

 

Even though the reaction to my Will Beeley Anthology was, I felt, a bit muted, I continue to dive a bit deeper into some of the fabulous little known artists featured on this blog's beloved All Pearls No Swine series. Our candidate for today : Folly's Pool, as featured with the song of the same name (cool, their own theme song. Or : lazy, they naed themselves after one of their tracks. Both work.) on All Pearls No Swine Volume  29. Maybe Beeley's folk-rock wasn't your thing, so how about folk rock via prog rock this time, in the best sense of the term. No endless keyboard noodlings just because, no sidelong instrument wanking just because. Instead a prog rock that has their roots in folk and folk rock, in something older and more solid than 'oh, look, what this Moog can do'. There is a clear link to the more progressive wing of the British folk-rock scene of the early 1970s, but I'm not an expert on that subject, so I let you, more knowledgable reader, if you are out there, make those connections. But really, “Jig In A” makes that link really obvious, even though the band was from Fresno, California!

There is some stuff on here that I would normally be cautious about, like a a ton of flute by band member Danny Jordan. But really, this is lovely stuff, with the flute, like the guitar breaks dosed just right to not overstay their welcome, even on a quasi instrumental like "Kathleen". "From A Memory" has a decidely West Coast feel to it (Fresno strikes back!), while "Before The Gates Of Elessaar" - befiitingly for its epic title and construction brings on some heavy guitars. Every one of the seven tracks here has something to recommend. I am also a fan of the epic tale of "Fallen Pony". But really, there are no duff tracks here, which given the slim track list, is great news for you and me and everyone we know. 

Folly's Pool - the band - dropped this fantastic album in 1977, at a time when prog rock was on its way out, then disappeared for a couple of years before making a new wave/pop record ten years later, then went silent before reuniting at the begining of this century and being surprisingly prolific since then. But Folly's Pool - the album - is a great one-shot of ultra lovely folk-prog-rock, so give this a listen, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree...

Hotdiggity, Them Bluegrass Chartbusters Are Filling Up Them Airwaves Again...

Time for another hoedown with the series that combines the sound of the backwoods with the popular songs of yesteryear. I might have mentioned it in the write-up to the last volume, but this series is in constant reworking, though here I have, let's say stabilizd, the whole thing, with the next ten or so volumes ready to go. Yes you heard that right. What I initially thought would be about three volumes continued to grow and grow beyond all reasonable proportions, and after setting arbitrary limits to how much volumes the series should have I gave up on that. I wanted to top it at ten, then twelve, then fifteen and now gave up on setting a limit. As long as I keep finding worthwhile bluegrass covers of pop tunes, this series will continue, and so it does. 

What makes these volumes grow is of course also that I keep finding new cool covers or bands that fit the series' profile, wich I then try to weed into the existing, up-until-then-finished volumes, so that some artists that I recently found don't just show up on, like volume thirteen or whatever. So existing numbers get dropped off, then push into one of the next volumes, which then pushes other songs out etc. etc. 

A top notch addition to the roster is Love Canon, a group that focuses on covering songs from the 1980s (they bend the dates a little bit, for, say "Solsbury Hill", which will show up on the next volume). These guys have real chops, and, more importantly, don't treat the whole thing as an ironic hardy-fuckin'-har exercise. For these reasons you haven't seen folks like Hayseed Dixie or The Cleverlys show up in this series. No piss takes on the genre, or bluegrass lampooning of the originals. There's certainly a time and place for that, but not now and not here. A band that skirts with the 'funny bluegrass covers' label, but has just enough reverence for the originals and its tongue not so deeply in cheek that it theatens to push through the skin is the previously featured Steve'n'Seagulls, who with this volume are also gaining their access ticket to Bluegrass Chartbusters. Love Canon stick with Peter Gabriel in reworking "Sledgehammer", while Steve'n'Seagulls cover - of course AC/DC and "Moneytalks".

We also welcome some other newcomers that will also sow up on future volumes, such as The Brothers Comatose, joined on this volume by John Craigie for a take on Don Henley's classic "The Boys Of Summer". Now that is a song that is great, but Henley's really 80s sounding version is probably one of my least favorite takes on the song. Hell, I even prefer The Ataris with their punk rock version (and changing the "deadhead sticker on a cadillac" line to "a Black Flag sticker on a cadillac" is pretty genius. But I digress). Alos new to the series in one-offs (for now): Crazy Mule covering Bob Seger's 'on the road' classic "Turn The Page" and Southern Strings' take on the Doobies' "Listen To The Music", where the young female lead singers vocals bring something to the song that I really like. 

Other than that, we got the usual roster of Pickin' On...artists, and other assembled first choice artists (check out Dale Ann Bradley's smokin' double-time take on "I Won't Back Down"). Again, tons of fun to be had, with other artists being covered including, bt not limited to Madness, Cyndi Lauper, Def Leppard, The Dixie Chicks, The Guess Who, Kings Of Leon, The Beatles, and The Who. The songs we all love and remember!, says he in a smarmy TV salesman voice (from back when you could order fishy looking music boxsets on teleshopping channels). 

If you've been on board with this series for a couple of volumes, you'll know what to expect, and if you haven't - well, its never too late, to find your inner good ol' boy with a heart for classic radio. Plus you'll get some rather fetching cover art, if I migt say so, though I forgot where I picked this up. So, get ready to throw down for the hoedown...

Yes, Yes, We've Got Him Covered Again...That Starman, That Thin White Duke, That Blackstar...

 

While I'm waiting for inspiration for another Bowie project, here's another trip through the long corridors full of funhouse mirror versions of Bowie songs. I sure hope the anonymous person answering my question of what songs they want to see on one of these is still around, because while it took me a while to do it, here are versions of “Watch That Man” (going for the obvious, it's Lulu, produced and graced with unmistakable backgrouns vocals by Mr. Bowie himself, plus Ronno on killer guitar) and “The Width Of The Circle” (way harder to find, I finally found a version credited to Norman Ball & Back In NY).

The whole compilation actually plays out like this, alternating between big names (Blondie and their classic live cover of “Heroes”, Nirvana's equally classic live unplugged cover of “The Man Who Sold The World”, Duran Duran covering “Five Years”), known quantities (Big Country taking on “Cracked Actor”, Robbie Willliams covering “Kooks”, Rick Wakeman playing “Space Oddity” alone on piano in remembrance of Bowie) and a lot of lesser known folks. Of these, I really like Lazer Cake retro-futuristic cover of “Fame”, on the other side of the (noise) spectrum we have Alice Price's take on “Lazarus” and Hazel O'Connor's “Rock'n'Roll Suicide”.

In the somewhat known quantity department we have Bowie's long-time bass player and on-stage foil Gail Ann Dorsey again, as on Vol. 3 once more teaming up with Mathieu 'M' Chedid, here doing a full- band version of “Life On Mars?”. And Beck can probably safely be slotted somewhere in between big name and known quantity. The track “Sound And Vision (Second Vision” is indeed a sort-of-sequel to his cover on Vol. 1. The original 'reimagined' tracks was almost nine minutes long and without much flow, thus I cut two different versions, the first version more or less being the 'song part' version, while this 'Second Vision' is essentially composed of the original re-imagining's beginning and end. Call it an idiosyncratic spin on a classic, and you'll get the idea.

There's again some nice variety here: Caecilia Norby & Lars Danielsson take “Andy Warhol” on a jazz trip, while Seu Jorge continues to acoustically bossa nova his way through the Bowie catalogue, here with a warm, wonderful take on “Changes”. Hey, even the Spiders From Mars show up!

We've Got You Covered – David Bowie Vol. 4 continues to prove two things we've seen throughout the series: the breadth and depth of Mr. Bowie's catalogue, though obviously most cover artists stick to the more known songs here, and so do I, and the possibility to do interesting stuff with Bowie's music. So, hear some great classics in versions you might not have heard before, or haven't heard in a while...

When Albert Bouchard Launches Bombs Over Germany or What Imaginos Did On His Summer Vacation...

 

When last we checked in with Albert Bouchard, the man had finally realized his dream and putout Imaginos the way he wanted to...or at least as closely aspossible. His version of Imaginos was an interesting lesson in less is more and power through restriction. With the album being a low-budget production that Bouchard started with his music students, then mainly worked on it with David Hershfeld, plus an honest evaluation of the state of his never-that-great-to-begin-with-voice led him to reimagine Imaginos as a more relaxed liste than the hair metal extravaganza his old band ended up turning it into.

But of course, if luck favors the bold, hubris favors the successful. Re-Imaginos was not only a dream project come true, it was also a real success. Given the low front-end investment, it was – according to Bouchard – the first album that made him money, so of course he more or less immediately began work on a sequel. He had planned, or says now that he planned three double albums covering the adventures of Imaginos and incorporating most of Blue Öyster Cult's songs. That sounds like a lot, it also sounds a lot like bullshit.

Just saying : In the mid-to late 80s, no one was giving Albert Bouchard, fuck-up ex-drummer of Blue Öyster Cult - who themselves were swirling down in terms of record sales and critical esteem - that even that band didn't want back, money to record one double album, let alone three, all chronicling an impossible-to-follow storyline about an evil alien-created shapeshifter leading mankind to its doom. These albums only ever existed in Bouchard's mind, or maybe in fever dreams. But a funny thing happened in 2020. Buyoed by the succes of his Imaginos, Bouchard finally found himself in a position to make that crazy dream come true. Because, hey, who was going to stop him this time ? These Imaginos albums are essentially private press releases, all coming out on Bouchard's own Rockheart label. So, even with the most minute of sales, Bouchard will be in the Red And Black.

But here's the thing. Man, is Bouchard overegging the pudding, and that is before he really goes mad in part three. Ostensibly about how Imaginos influences Germany into starting World War One, Imaginos II starts to just put various Blue Öyster Cult songs seemingly at random in its purported storyline, but since that storyline is all but imposible to follow anyway, and the alien-powered title character can just more or less wave everything away with a 'it's magic/Alien/whathavewe' power, it's probably just as well. Except that the One Buck Guy will not stand for all this bloat. A song like “7 Screaming Diz-Busters”, with the diz being a part of the male anatomy (I let you guess which) has no discernible link to Sandy Pearlman's original Imaginos cycle, though since he might've sprinkled a line or two from his poetry epic into it, you can probably construct a very loose, very shaky case if you wanted to.

But I don't. I just look at the remakes of BÖC numbers and decide whether this new version brings something new or interesting to the song or not, and throw it off if the answer is no. And so Imaginos II goes from a slightly overstuffed 14 numbers to a vinyl-era album appropriate ten songs and 46 minute album length, with “OD'd On Life Itself”, “The Red And The Black” and “Cities On Flame (With Rock'n'Roll” being the survivors from the BÖC songs, plus “Quicklime Girl” from the pre-BÖC era. The original songs – like the singalong “Independence Day” or the surging (sub) title song, that Bouchard made sound as much like a lost BÖC tune as possible - are actually pretty neat.

There was also a major piece of surgery I performed. The opener “When War Comes” had some production problems and poorly recorded vocals, belying the modest production budget, and at sevn and a half minutes was not a great start to the program. So I did quite a bit of editing, mainly keeping the (faux) orchestral parts with foreboding military drum march and bits of the song ending, so that it will serve as an overture for the spectacle to come without overstaying its welcome. As is, the streamlined Imaginos II runs much smoother and better than the unwieldy (wait 'til we get to part three...) original. If you really want the whole shebang, you can do so at the usual sources, but as a primer on both the story and sound of this sequel, this should do nicely.

So, if you never bothered to ask what exactly happened to Imaginos once he quit the 19th Century, boy, does Albert Bouchard have some stories to tell you. Here's the slightly abridged second chapter...

Ok, Ok, I Know This Isn't Da Capo...

 

...much to the disappointment of some. I had thought about that album, because it came up in the thread on A-sides and B-sides, and a reader had already asked me to do an alternate, read : better version of Love's Da Capo, to which I can only say: I would if I could but I won't 'cause I can't. Other than a couple of single edits and b-sides, there is simply nothing in the can that can replace “Revelation”, which is exactly what everyone thought it was at the time: a cheap and easy way to fill a record side for a band that only had half an album's worth of songs, while also simultaneously proclaiming hipness Two birds with one stone, though the third bird, a pigeon, was the record buyer in this scenario. But unless someone finds an old cookie jar in Arthur Lee's estate with long-thought lost tapes from the period, Da Capo will probably have to stay as it is.

But there's another, less heralded album that has the exact same problem of Da Capo: A useless and seemingly neverending, tiresome long jam that takes up almost an entire record side. The band, as you have wildly guessed from seeing the above cover art is Poco, and the scene of the original crime was their second, self-titled album. The year before Poco had issued Pickin' Up The Pieces, their debut album that was not without drama, when controm freak Richie Furay pushed Randy Meisner out of the band. Recently relistening to Pickin' Up The Pieces, I can say that that album hasn't held up particularly well, it's very twee-sounding, with some cheesy 60s countrypolitan orchestration , the constant forced 'yee-haw's and laughter are grating and the band had not yet really figured out how to put the rock in country rock. The self-titled follow-up was supposed to change that, showing to the public a more hard-edged sound. And the best way that the band thought up to do so, was to record their own extended jam number.

Poco decided to re-record “Nobody's Fool” from their debut album, which would then lead into a quasi-sidelong jam (they squeezed in one number before it, but at 18 and a half minute that jam could have filled up its own side easily). Here's the thing: It's not even memorably dreadful, just dreadfully dull. Pure boredom for about fifteen minutes straight. They thought they had what it takes to pull that off, but they don't. There's no real musical ideas, no development, no musical themes or motifs that emerge. Just a steady, unchanging rhythm, then Messina noodles a bit on his guitar, then Rusty Young gets to make his pedal steel sound like an organ – which can be impressive for a short spurt, but grows tiresome very quickly, as everything else here – then George Grantham gets a short percussion solo, and then rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, snore, zzzzzzzzz, oh I'm sorry, did I miss something?

As indicated by the Spanish name for the jam section (“El Tonto De Nadie, Regressa”, or Nobody's Fool Revisted) Poco decided to style their jam after Santana. Terrible idea. Not only because they don't have the chops to do it, but why would you want to listen to these guys try that (and, inevitably, fail)? If I want to listen to Santana-style Latin guitar jams, I can just listen to Santana, I don't need a country rock band that has no business doing that kind of music doing a second rate imitation of it. So, “El Tonto De Nadie, regressa” is no bueno, and thus needs to go. Or almost. For this alternate version of Poco's second album I didn't have quite enough material to entirely say Adios to “El Tonto De Nadie, Regressa”. But I cut down that jam drastically, by about three quarters. Out goes almost all of the fake Santana stuff, and everything else is there in very small measures, including the little wordless vocalizing section that should have been the end of the jam, if they didn't had to akwardly go back to the Latin stuff, and then even more akwardly tack the refrain of “Nobody's Fool” onto the end, just to remind people that this was supposed to be the same song. If you think that even at four minutes the jam section drags a bit, imagine this being four times as long with no significant upgrade in interest.

Long-time readers will be familiar with a trope of my alt albums: The newly-minted title song as bookends, made easier by the Poco anthology The Forgotten Trail offering an acoustic version of “You Better Think Twice”. It probably annoyed the deathly jealous Richie Furay to no end that the sole Jim Messina-written number became the signature tune of this album, but there you go. It certainly wouldn't be the end of his frustrations. It also feels appropriate to name a sophomore effort You Better Think Twice, and just to amuse myself, instead of going the song & reprise route, both versions' titles are differentiated by their (Once) and (Twice) tags. Finally, there was an unused Rusty Young instrumental, “Last Call (Cold Enchilada)”, more country and much more sprightly than the “El Tonto” stuff. With that back in, it was all about balancing the longer, instrumental sections (of which the seven minute “Anyway Bye Bye” also has quite a bit) with the shorter and more succinct songs – et voilà, here's a way more listenable version of their second album minus the braindead jam deadweight.

Now, you should really think twice about leaving that album behind. It's not quite top notch Poco, but the pieces are not only picked up, but falling into place. The evolution of Poco will indeed be a topic worth following, as I have been on a bit of a Poco bender recently, so there will be another couple of albums of improved Poco coming your way in the next weeks. So, get on board right now with one of the most underrated bands of the 70s...