Bruce's Inadvertently Controversial Blockbuster - Listen Again Without Prejudice

Welcome to the month of July, the first (and last) ever Born In The USA Appreciation Month here at One Buck Records. Why?, you ask. Because why the hell not, I say. So, what is Born In The USA Appreciation Month? Well, during the next weeks I will post a bunch of stuff more or less related to that album. Some will be Bruce, some will not. There's at least two albums by younger artists that I want to post that show a clear sonic influence of Bruce' landmark album. There's a tribute album, and at least one alternate album that tries to  recontextualize the tite tune and Bruce's other Vietnam tales. But of course if we start the festivities, and that means starting with the riginal album. I don't know when - if ever - you have listened to Born In The USA, but listen again - without prejudice...

Born In The USA was famously or infamously was boorn out of the same sessions that birthed Nebraska, and it would take only a little bit of tinkering to make it a lot more...Nebraska-esque. In the same way that his electric Nebraska demos - finally revealed to the public last year - showed how Nebraska could become more like Born In The USA if the Boss had chosen so, the demos and bootleg cuts show that Born In The USA could have been as big a downer as Nebraska, had Springsteen chosen to do so. Instead he went for the biggest, shiniest sound of his career, and things got...muddld...and complicated. But you can hear the pessimism and downbeat atmosphere of Nebraska through the haze of Max Weinberg's thunderous drus and Roy Bittan's keyboard fanfares. There's hints everywhere. Of a deep and dark uneasiness. Of tragedy disguised as comedy. Of depression disguised as upbeat dance tunes.

One of the infamous memories of Bruce's Born In The USA era is him jiving akwardly with a teenage Courtney Cox to "Dancing In The Dark". When Jon Landay told Bruce that what was missing from the album was a hit, and Springsteen went home and wrote a piece that delivered on that front, you culd accuse Springsteen of seling out, or what not. But when was the last time you really listened to the lyrics of "Dancing In The Dark"? "I take a look in the mirror, I want to change my hair, my clothes, my face / I ain't nothin' but tired / and I'm just tired and bored with myself." Like the lyrics from the title tune, there is an obvious disconnect between the upbeat, joyful music and the downbeat sentiments. It's possibe to look at "Dancing In The Dark" as one of the first expressions of what we now know were bouts of depression that Springsteen was battling with. 

Now, about those production choices. Springsteen approved them, and owned them, and in some ways he continued the 'one for the large audience, and one for me (and the critics)' principle he had established with Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River, then Nebraska and this album, and arguably continued with the subdued Tunnel Of Love and the glossy Human Touch. And it's just so easy to get caught up in the soun dof things. The album came with a lyric sheet, so people could have (and should have) easily sussed out the bitter Vietnam veteran tale in the title song, but Max Weinberg's huge drums - sounding, according to Bruce like handgrnades, which is correct and like the sound of panic, which isn't - and Bittan's triumphant keyboard melody covered the lyrical concerns up real good and real quick. 

The hints of a darker, less mainstreamy album remain, if only in hints, on the album. "Glory Days" started as a one-verse-and-chorus fragment during the Nebraska home recordings, decidedly differently, in that the chorus stated that the protagonist never had any glory days. But even if the final singalong version inverses sentiment and feel of that original idea, if you think about it, "Glory Days" just isn't as glorious as it pertains to be - and again it's easy to get suckered in by the boisterous chorus. But no amount of sha-la-la's can cover up that the heart of the song, with the baseball player's and waitress's lives peaking in high school and then - like John Mellencamp's Jack and Diane,getting on a long downhill slope, is sad, whether acknowledged or not. Like a ton of other protagonists, these folks are on a downbound train. 

Soringsteen did his best to dress up these tunes. "Working On The Highwy" gained a singalong chorus and lost the rather sordid backstory of its original incarnation titles "Child Bride". And "No Surrender" and "Bobby Jean", both songs that adress hois colleagues - the E-Streeters in the former, and the departing Steve Van Zandt in the latter - stay beautifully anthems to friendship and persistance. But yeah, you listen closely to this album and through the extremely Eighties production, and the album suddenly seems to be a lot more complicated than its popular reception and misappropriation of the Reagan administration among others, suggest.

When Bruce had finished the album, his friend, rock critic Dave Marsh, told him that the sound and sensivity of the album's title track and iconography would cause him trouble, but Bruce just laughed the idea off. He would learn the hard way how right Marsh was. But that doesn't stop Born In The USA from being a highly fascinating album, on a number of levels. So, listen again - without prejudice...

I Am...I Said (No Neil, But Lots Of Other Diamonds)

 

I am The One Buck Guy.

I said that once I completed the next decade of All Pearls, No Swine, I would post an All Pearls, No Swine Megapack to permit people to pick up missing volumes, notably 31-34. 

Well, I Am...I Said...And here it is.  

Not to turn this into repost city, but a promise is a promise. And this I promise as well: I'll be back with new music shortly... 

Of Indians, Italians, Germans And Pirates: Terry Dolan's Later Adventures Revisited

Making a hackneyed joke about how all the Germans love the music of David Hasselhoff is akin to maing a joke about Nickelback being the bane of any real fan of rock music - there is some truth to it but boy, is that joke worn out. Oh, also: Did you lnow that Germans love The Hooters more than almost anyone else? And, since you've read the title and checked the artwork, you'll probably know where this is leading. One country loved the best bar band ever - or at least the most accomplished bar band ever - more than any other country, although Italy fought them really hard/ Why it's ze Germans, of course. You might or will hopefully remember Terry Dolan from making one of the all-time great one-offs (or rather none-off, but that's another matter) with his shelved self-titled debut. Having given up on a solo career, Terry Dolan formed Terry & The Pirates, a.k.a. the best bar band ever. 

Led instrumentally, as Terry Dolan originally had been, by the twin-guitar attack of Greg Douglass and John Cipollina, Terry & The Pirates became a local legend in the Bay Area and consistently drawing in its musicians. But being a great bar band with a really good songwriter like Dolan and a guitar player extraordinaire like John Cippolina didn't mean that the record comapny industry had a use for an aging (urban) legend like Dolan, and his merry band of pirates. They could fill the local bars and watering holes around, but despite Cippolina's somewhat legendary West Coast status and Dolan's proof of talent, they couldn't get a record company to bite on them, after Warner Brothers ditched Dolan. Enter ze Germans. Though to be fair, and chronologically correct, entra en scena: gli Italiani. 

Now that's some pirate crew ya got there, Terry...

Why exactly Germans and Italians latched onto Dolan's good-natured Westcoast rock, while the band couldn't make an impression anywhere else, is a mystery. But Italy and Germany it was to get Terry & The Pirates a forum. The Italians were first with a live album (1979's Too Close For Comfort), but to bring out an honest-to-goodness studio album, Terry & The Pirates had to cross the Rubicon Rhine. Their 1980 debut The Doubtful Handshake and 1981 follow-up Wind Dancer were only issued in Germany, 1982's Rising Of The Moon was at least also issued in Italy a year later. Given their popularity in Germany, it's not surprising that the band was flown over for a very short visit in the same year, but long enough to show up on Germany's legendary Rockpalast concert series, that were televised.    

I mentioned this towards the end of my write-up on Terry Dolan's classic that never was, that his music career didn't end there, and that I might look at his later career a little further on. Well, the time is now. Native American Trilogy is inspired by the artwork of those three albums - as well as the content of a number of songs - and compiles the best moments of those records, which for all intent and purpose are the only records the band did during the Eighties, arguably their high-time as a performing outfit. By the time of Rise Of The Moon, the band had shed their late 70s West Coast rock sound for a typical 80s production, ultrasynthetic and booming-sounding. That's why the title song of that album is here in a nicer, tougher-sounding live version from that Rockpalast concert, together with an instrumental Cippolina showcase called "Cobra". 

Notice ze German-speaking sticker on ze album cover, ja?!

As for the songs, most of them are good old fashioned rock songs, some with a country feel, like the ballad "Montana Eyes" that he cut two times across these three albums, and both versions are equally good, so I kept both. Also on board of this pirate ship is the first issued studio version of Dolan's classic "Inlaws And Outlaws", that had been in his repertoire for the past seven years or so, before making its debut on Too Close For Comfort and, in a muscular version, its studio album debut on The Doubtful Handshake. While not earth-shaking or suer-innovative, these are very fine songs that deserved to be heard by more people than just ze Germans et gli Italiani. 

And now of course you can be some of the lucky non-German and non-Italian folks listening to more Dolan, as we all should. 

P.S. For more John Cipollina, check out Jim Murray's The Ladies Man, if you haven't already... 

Hey There Bubba, Get Yer Fiddle, Time For Another One Of These...

X To The B To The G To The C, y'all! Word! Oh, uh, I'm sorry, wrong genre. Howdy y'all, my fellow musical country bumpkins and Bluegrass lovers - it is indeed the time of X, as in, the tenth volume of our Bluegrass Chartbusters series. That would be a neat achievement for many a series, but as I hinted at before, for this particular series it's fair to say that we've only just begone... 

Nothing new 'round these parts in terms of what you'd expect and what you'd get: another set of twenty handpicked covers of yesteryear's chart entries, as brought to you by the same fine batch of musicians that populated the first nine volumes. We sadly say goodbye to the long-defunct Grass Cats, who leave this series with a very fine rendition of Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine". And we say hello to a new band of contributors, the ominously named Grassmasters.

Bye Bye Cats, it's been god knowin' ya!

Grassmasters sems to have been the short-term rival project of the cheapo comp and lapsed copyright release specialist Synergy Entertainment for the subgenre's undisputed king, CMH's Pickin On...-series. They brought out three dozen albums between 2004 and 2010, with most of them cmoing out in 2005 and 2006, or around the prime of the Bluegrass cover album genre, probably to compete with the Pickin' on offerings. And while CMH was using this boom period to branch out into a ton of less conventional artists and genres, The Grassmasters stayed with the classics, covering Dylan, Clapton, Aerosmith, Johnny Cash, The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac and Elvis. The latter's "Heartbreak Hotel" is included here as their introduction to the series. Most of their work is instrumental, though they would occasionally add vocals to some selections and we will see them again a number of times. 

Lots of good stuff covering artists we haven't had on the series before: Jackson Browne! Poison! Daft Punk! The Raconteurs! Urge Overkill! The Dream Academy! My personal fave from this collection is Love Canon's wonderful take on Bruce Hornsby's "Just The Way It Is", which for me brings out the emotional nuances of the song better than the original. I'm also quite taken by Steve'n'Seagulls' take on AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long", which captures the song's ridiculou single entendre's perfectly. And long-time reliable series contributors The Petersens, mainly working in the ballad section, surprise with a groovy take on Alain Toussault's "Southern Nights" (made famous by Glen Campbell, of course) in which Julianne Peterson really let's the Southern drawl shine through. For, you know, that extra Southern feeling. 

So, folks, throw this on for another smokin' good time with them Bluegrass Chartbusters, as ever, only and exclusively brought to you by One Buck Records and the One Buck Guy...

Get Into The Spirit Of Spirit...Once Again

Someone asked, the One Buck Guy delivers. In spades. Indeed, all original Spirit links are dead, as these have been around for a while. Short reminder: You want a re-up, just ask for it, as 'Unknown' did. Now, if he had given himself a nickname to sign his message, in the name of convivility, that would have been even better, but we're off to a good start. So, here's the sprited Spirit Five Pack,

including

- the reimagined one album version of sprawling double whopper Spirit Of '76, one of this blog's first 'classics' which you can find more about here.   

- the Spirit Of The Seventies comp that compiles the rest of the worthwhile 1970s Spirit material post-Sardonicus into much more listenable form, with more info over here. 

- Radio Aqua Blue, the power quartet albumm that Spirit could have brought out in 1979 during a lean period in Spirit land (which, by now you have guessed, you can read about more here).  

- Possible follow-up Rock Of Ages, featuring lots of guitar power from the once again power trio (I don't post a link since the write-up is really short and relatively inconsequential). 

and finally

- the Spirit of The Eighties comp that compiles the band's uneven 1980s material into a very listenable compilation, that I talk about here.

The words, wit and wisdom of the One Buck Guy (ahem...) are over there, the music will be right here. 

Hours of heavy rock'n'roll, beautiful ballads and endearing oddities from Randy California and his ever-changing - except step dad Ed Cassidy of course - line-up of sidemen.

This is your chance, folks, get into the Spirit of Spirit once again...

Summer's Just Around The Bend - And I Got The Music For It...

I guess four CDs are not that much in the grand scheme of things, especially the grand scheme of my music collection, which should be somewhere north of 2.500 physical albums. But if someone would read along the labels of albums and go by 'R', they would say, hey this guy really likes Rascal Flatts. Which I kind of do, although I'm not some sort of super fan. I actually came into the posession of these four discs by happenstance. There was a used & new music store in the Paris city centre which I usually visited twice per year. Yes, you guessed it, during les soldes, the special sales weeks that are coming up next week I believe. That music store had this back room full of CDs that they really wanted to get rid of, and they really wanted to get rid of them during les soldes, so the deal was 'empty out these racks of crap, and to make sure you'll do, you'll get 15 CDs for ten bucks'. Which, for year, I happily obliged. These 15 CDs would often break down in about 3-4 that you would genuinely be happy to have 5-6 from artists that you'd know and might like and about 5 free agent/take a flyer albums that you took to make up the count. 

It's been a couple of years, but during my - by that time probably only annual - visit, four of Rascal Flatts' albums fell in my hand during the 15 for 10 hunt. I had only heard the name, might've heard "Bop That Head" exactly once on the radio and knew that they were broadly classified as country music. So in the bag with those four! Clearly, the music store had drastically overestimated the Parisians' hunger for friendly coutry pop as clearly these discs were brand new. I guess the store had just quietly emptied out their Rascal Flatts section and moved these discs into the dreaded backroom purgatory, where Cds don't go to die, but to linger undead around for years. But no more! One Buck Guy to the rescue! 

Having brought my big-ass plastic bags of treasures home - there was the same deal for DVDs, so I normally arrived with fifteen new CDs and fifteen new DVDs, much to the wife's happiness, no doubt - how to proceed with this band I somewhat barely knew. So I went with the chronological approach, taking the oldest disc, Feels Like Today. A mistake, as it was the worst of the four albums, by quite a bit, full of sappy ballads and not much else of interest. But things got better, once we hit Me And My Gang, Still Feels Good and Nothing Like This. Here's the thing about Rascal Flatts' music: It's not great music and it's not very profound. But it is fun, especially if you weed out all those sappy ballads, which was the trigger for today's One Buck record of the day. 

Summer's Just Around The Bend - it's title taken from aline in kick-ass opener "Red Camaro" - is named as such, because that's what Rascal Flatts' midtempo and uptempo evokes: Rolling in a car with the windows down, fighting off the heat that comes right between the end of spring and the beginning of summer. There's tons of things Rascal Flatts' music is not good for - philosophizing for one thing - but this is great driving music. If only I could still have a car that accepts, you know, physical bearers of musical gifts. Not in the wife's Muskmobile, of course! Originally it was about fourteen tracks as a sort of best of of those four discs, but then I decided to go the whole hog, dropping two sappy-is numbers and filling it up with fun and uptempo numbers from throughout the band's career. 

They're rednecks and male models all in one - they're reddels. Oh, they also make some music...

There's a reason why Rascal Flatts' music got better and more immediate with Me And My Gang, and that reason is named Dann Huff. The long-standing Nashville producer and former member of AOR/hard rock band Giant. It's obvious what Huff brings to the table: more guitars, more stadium-ready choruses, a lot more punch to the proceedings. Also included is "Backwards", one of the rare 'country humor' songs that I really like, and that are funny - the yodeling honky tonk intro that makes Gary LeVox sound like Garth Brooks giving way to a frenetic rock-based list of all the things that you get back, when you play a country record backwards. Fun stuff! And then I made room for exactly one (1) sappy ballad, their cover of Marcus Hummond's classic  "Blesss The Broken Road" which is a wondeeful song, and as the closing number I'll allow it. 

I haven't had time yet to make fun of the dudes' names. Gary LeVox and Jay Demarcus can at least claim royal lineage or Cajun kin or something with those names, but how great of a redneck name is Joe Don Rooney? His parents were seemingly big fans of Walking Tall, which makes it even better and more Redneck-y! At least they didn't name him Buford! This willl almost certainly be the only Rascal Flatts album around here, so allow me to make some good-natured fun of Joe Don while I can! 

Oooh, moody, baby!

Anyway, let's cut the chit chat, and the mockery of poor Joe Don (...on second thought, let's not), and get down to business. Twenty Rascal Flatts tracks, one great comp to roll down the highways (or, you know, your diveway) and feel the sounds of the summer... 

 

80s in 20 = APNS 40. Yup, The Math Checks Out...

40 isn't a milestone when it's your birthday. I might only speak for myself, but I felt I took like five years in one once that hill was climbed, little health issues and what not cropping up. But for our oldtimer of series here on One Buck Records? Reaching 40 is nothing to sneeze at, so we won't, celebrating its, uh, 40th birthday volume with, uh, a hearty but underplayed 'yay'. And even for this low-key anniversary, we have invited some illustrious guests, as this volume of All Pearls, No Swine has possibly the highest number of high-profile names to date. 

Starting the festivities is Mr. Warren Zevon with the The Envoy-outtake "The Risk", a synth-driven rock track that sounds one of the Springsteen-inspired tunes Zevon would occasionally write at the time. Well, he certainly beat freakin' Rusty Young in fake-Springsteen-ism! (Ka-ching!) Other big name contributors include Ian McCullough, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Bob Welch, and Bonnie Tyler. The latter has the frankly astonishing Jim Steinman-produced cover of CCR's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain", that is really more of a re-imagining, earning Steinman a co-writing credit in the process. Oh, and there's R.E.M. sending us out with their cover of the classic "Moon River", because why the hell not.  

"I'm not sure, we're looking cool here, guys..."

This volume probably doesn't have as many real obscure treasures as other volumes, but folks like Bryce Wemple, Gable Wales, The Jeffords Brothers and Echo Beach hold up the banner of the tiny indie label/self-pulished record fraction. Toys and The Cheepskates bring the power pop/garage rock yo the table, while Swiss AOR popster Phil Carmen goes country pop with "Born A Rider". Mazarati are almost forgotten also-rans from Minneapolis, who were of course protégés of Prince, who gave them a number of songs to record, but after hearing their so-so take on "Kiss" decided to take back the track and recorded it as the classic we all know and love. Mazarati's backing vocals stay in the mix of the released Prince version, which shows what character can do for a song, but just for comparison's sake it's interesting to hear their original take on "Kiss", inferior as it may be. 

The Bellamy Brothers were never cool, and their smooth country-pop is strictly of the okay variety. I tried to put a little comp of them together, but even a ten track album has some less-than-great stuff on it, so I said 'fuck it', finally gave up on that idea, and instead placed thir far and away best song on here. The rest might be not all that, but "Kids Of The Baby Boom" is great, a prototype of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" perhaps, but with actual insight and humour. They had bigger hits, but never a better song. You will need only one Bellamy Brothers song in your collection, and it's this one (Apologies to "If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body (Would You Hold It Against Me?)", which might deserve inclusion on that title alone. But I digress). 

"Well, look at us, fellas. We really aren't lookin' cool"

All Pearls, No Swine 40 has, as you might have guessed, a ton of stylistic variety from artists both known and unknown, for almost 70 minutes of fine, underrated music from the 80s. Dig it!