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...

Get ready for the biggest, baddest All Pearls, No Swine Megapack ever...

 

Ha, promise upheld. Last week, a new reader (Hi Dave !) asked for an upload of the precedent All Pearls No Swine Megapacks. But instead of hiding those in the backpages of this blog, I'd say I put this up on the front page, so any other newbies, johnny-come-latelies or folks wanting to stuff holes in their collection can do so in one fell swoop. Yup, you read that right dear reader, for the same very very low price of nothing, you'll get not one, not two, but all three Megapacks, for the biggest and baddest All Pearls, No Swine Megapack ever.

This pack contains All Pearls, No Swine Volumes 1 – 30. That's 600 songs across tons of genres and five decades and change. Literally hundreds of songs to discover or rediscover, if you are just getting with the All Pearls, No Swine program. Fifty years of music that didn't bother the charts but hopefully find their way into your hearts. So, go and unpack the big All Pearls, No Swine Megapack and start discovering!

And for dessert, here's some completely gratuitous free cheesecake.

What If It's April's Fool's Day And Van Morrison Does The Fooling..?

 

George Ivan Morrison is not known to be a jolly good fellow, he's known - and has forever been known - to be a cranky, cantankerous old man, even when he was still a young man. So it takes a lot to get a guy like Van Morrison to do practical jokes. Like a recording contract that Morrison felt limited him brutally in his creativity for example. His contract with Them's former manager ans his new label BANG Records – despite netting him a top ten hit and the song most associated with him in “Brown Eyed Girl” - quickly became an albatross around his neck, when Berns issued eight tracks – that Van Morrison thought was going to be the a- and b-sides of four singles – without the artist's permission or even knowledge.

Morrison's fortune seemed to turn when Berns's turned bad, keeling over from a heart attack in late 67 at only 38 years old, belatedly victim of a chronic weakening of the heart as a child following a bout of rheumatic fever. Warner Brothers bought him out of his contract with Bang records, enforced by Berns' widow Ilene, who herself seemed to be a piece of work. Let's just say it certainly sounds shady when a record label does a buy-out in cash in an abandoned warehouse. So, Van Morrison was free to pursue the songs and recordings he had started before the whole BANG Records misadventure and that would shortly turn into the all-time classic Astral Weeks. All's well that ends well, right?

Except, except, except...in that infamous, and infamousy lopsided contract with Bang Records that Van the Man had, in true rock star fashion, failed to read entirely or in detail, called for a sort of 'severance fee' of no less than 36 songs still due to Berns' publishing company within a year. So, if you're Van Morrison, what do you do? Well, you take an out of tune guitar, make up a bunch of nonsense songs which are mostly extremely short doodles (the longest one clocks in at an amazing minute thirty three, the magnificent opus known as “The Big Royalty Check”) and often parodies of existing songs like “La Bamba”, “Twist And Shout” and “Hang On Sloopy”.

The latter two are of course no coincidence, rather an example that Morrison's humor could be quite sharp and cutting – not above mocking a dead man, the two are Bert Berns co-compositions. Man, when Van gets a chance to twist the knife in...(into a dead man's body, that is). George Ivan Morrison secetly – or not so secretly – is the Hulk: you better not make him angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry. And he is probably angry most of the time.

This is hilariously, viciously uncommercial stuff that of course Ilene Berns could never use, at least officially. (The jury is still out when this showed up on bootlegs and gray market releases whether these were stolen or let go for a small fee). But it's indefinitely more listenable, than, say, Machine Metal Music, and for what is essentially a send up, he didn't charge people any money like Neil Young did with Everybody's Rockin'.

So, what to do with this stuff, that you astute readers have surmised will be an April's Fool's Day-approved One Buck Record of the day? Well, I don't expect this to be anyone's favorite Van Morrison album anytime soon. Or ever. But it's fun while it lasts, and everyone should hear it once, just to acknowledge that the Vanster does have a sense of humour, twisted as it may be. Some even claim they have seen Van smile once or twice, but those reports have been unconfirmed. Actually, listen to him crack himself up with the completely ridiculous nonsense vocalizing of “Chickee Choo”.

Anyway, if you're mentally and physically ready to hear Morrison masterpieces such as his two part epic “Blow In Your Nose”/”Nose In Your Blow”, “Want A Danish”, “The Wobble” or “You Say 'France' And I Whistle”, well here is your chance.So, check this out, maybe your new favorite Van Morrison song is just a click away (I wouldn't put money on it). Approached with the right state of mind, this should bring a smile to your face, as you listen to Van Morrison gleefully piss all over the concept of contractual obligation.

The One Buck Guy Has Some Cheap Tricks To Lure You...

 ...as well as some old ploys and a bunch of shenanigans. Joe Ely on thursday was a good start, but I thought to myself, "Gee, OBG, it's been a while that you had some really crunchy music on here", and who can provide more crunch, plus more knowing ridiculousness, plus one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time, than Rockwood, Illinois's finest? 

And since me and you and everyone we know own already all the Cheap Trick classics - ok, maybe you don't, but we all know you should - today's One Buck Records is obviously something a little different, which hopefully has even the Cheap Trick connoisseur have his ears perk up. Because, as it should, this is an exclusive comp that you won't find in stores or elsewhere, collecting most of Cheap Trick's rare material from their heyday - I didn't bother with stuff from the last years (ok, decades now). What you get is the Cheap Trick we all know and love from the mid-70s to the late 90s. 

I'm also throwing in a couple of rare Robin Zander solo tracks, because why the hell not. Who's gonna stop me, right?! Also, as said, one of the finest voices in rock'n'roll, and he doesn't always get his due (Zander solo tracks are nos. 13,14,17 and 19 on disc two). Most of the tracks here are sourced from their box set Sex, America, Cheap Trick, that offered a huge amount of alternative versions, demos and live cuts. This was of course to lure in the collector, as well as not devaluing entirely the original albums. (Whether that really worked is another question for another day) Having all these albums brought me to the idea of collecting only these rarities in one place, aided and abetted by another dozen cuts of outtakes, live or bonus tracks.

And that is that. Old Ploys, Cheap Tricks & Other Shenanigans is the rare anthology that I sequenced chronologically, mainly because their music didn't change much over the twente years and change this set covers. Disc One presents music from 1977 to 1982, though to have a kick-ass opener (or, say, a more kick-ass opener), the single version of "Southern Girls" is presented slightly out of order.

You also get such Cheap Trick classics as "High Roller" and "Everything Works If You Let It" in different versions, as well as such unexpected treasures like their live medley take on Velvet Underground – not an obvious inspiration for the band – with "Waiting For The Man/Heroin". These four years were arguably the high point of the band, and even this alternate history gives you a good impression of how and why.

Disc Two covers more ground, going from 1982 to 1999, from one of their last indisputable classics in "If You Want My Love" to "That 70s Song", their reworked version of Big Star's "In The Streets" for modern sitcom classic That 70s Show, brought the band back to mind, if not into a huge spotlight. Quality is arguably and admittedly slightly spottier, kind of like the band's career itself. Of course, if you want to complete your collection of rarities, be sure to check out the re-upped Cheap Trick – Ruckus At The Movies, that collects all their original soundtrack contributions in one tidy package.

Et voilà, that is a bunch of old ploys, cheap tricks and shenanigans to immerse yourself in, full of trademark Rick riffage, Zander zounds, and the rock-solid support of the band's rhytm section (Beauty and The Beast?). Get your airguitar poses ready, ladies and gentlemen, Cheap Trick are going to rock the house...(and not with domestic problems, fingers crossed !).

That Mr. Ely, He Was One Of A Kind...Here's More Proof

When I posted Easy Street in December to honor the then recently deceased Joe Ely, I mentioned that the outtakes from his MCA sessions in the mid-80s were split into two for more reasonably timed and balanced albums. So here is the promised part two, One Of A Kind. Which he was. As with Easy Street, the sound is indeed very mid-80s, though maybe a touch less so than on the first album. One Of A Kind is a record that puts the rock into roots rock, starting straight off with three uptempo rockers, only slowing down for (imaginary) side closer "They Sing Of Her Beauty". a trademark beautiful country ballad. 

And then it's pedal to the medal again with the newly minted title song and "Back To My Molehill", a Zydeco-styled number that reminds us that Ely was an Americana artist in the truest sense, mixing different music styles into his music that isn't bound by the sometimes rigid style codes of the alt country crowd he influenced.  This is also abundantly clear with expansive album closer "Take Me Down", which has some reasonably avant garde keyboard sequences mixed in (New Wave oblige?). 

Like Easy Street, One Of A Kind's eight tracks show a performer who has a unique take on the genre, and these tracks should have been issued a lot earlier (as in, ever). For some fine music that brings to mind folks like The Mavericks or even Los Lobos (on "Molehill"), switch lanes from Easy Street and listen to the one and only Joe Ely, truly One Of A Kind...

Edit: I wanted to set a link to Easy Street and reup that one, but initially forgot. Both is now done, in case you want the double shot of Mr. Ely...