Mom, There's Some Beardo Weirdos Here, And It Ain't Even Christmas Yet...

If I were a hundred percent the music snob that my more mainstream music-minded college buddies say I am, this comp would probably look something like this: Gather some of the deep cuts from ZZ Top's first decade as that 'lil' ol' blus band from Texas', maybe top the whole thing of with some choice cuts from their mid-90s to today work, when they renewed the rowdy blus and barroom boogie of their beginnings, and certainly stay away a mile from their charts successes and music of the 80s, when that lil' red ZZ Top Eliminator ran on sequencers, electronic drums and tech effects over everything. 

But, you know, I'm not as much of a hipster as it seems, and it just so happens I forgot my hipster card today, together with my streaming service subscription and my social media accounts. So obviously I'm gonna run straight into the opposite drection of what an acceptable ZZ Top compilation would look like! That ol' OBG and that lil' ol' blues band from Texas - a match made in machine heaven. 

As for the weird-looking title, what can I tell you...that's how the comp is in my collection, so that's probably how it will be in yours. The first Greatest Hits is the original Greatest Hits of ZZ Top, though I did add "Stages", their best pop tune. A couple of years later, my dad bought the double disc anthology Rancho Texicana, of which I took most of the tracks I didn't have and that weren't on the first volume to make a Greatest Hits Vol. 2. Which of course means that this will be comp number three, and thus Greatest HIIIts...And Missus. Hopefully not too many misses. because this album is definitely not doing what you think it might be doing, picking up the best of the rest. Hell, to be fair the Greatest Hits moniker is somewhat of a lie, done so that my Greatest Hits series can continue. 

This isn't really a Greatest Hits comp - even taking the skeezey-looking Vol. 3 into account - because what I wanted to do with this is probably quite different from what a lot of other people want from their ZZ Top. As said above, I wasn't around when the 'little'ol blues band from Texas' started to make a name for itself in the early 70s, neither for their unexpected and improbable, if short-lived stint as weirdly admirable hipsters following the success of 1983's Eliminator. But those ZZ Top, who chain drummer Frank Beard to a sequencer and load up the keyboards and Fairlights, those are my ZZTop, for better or worse. ZZ Top? More like ZZ Pop, am I right? So, in order to compile this album, I actually had to dig for something that any ZZ Top fan would tell you should stay buried. Like, six feet under buried.

After the breakthrough of Eliminator and the relative success of carbon copy Afterburner, the record company and the band decided, that if folks were interested in checking out more ZZ Top, they should be able to do that in the CD format. Except that the first five ZZ Top albums, plus 1981's eperimental El Loco had never made it onto a digital disc. Ready to give the fans what they thought they would want, and following the little-known doctrine 'Fix if it ain't broke 'til it's broke', the band added new electronic drum effects and treated guitar, so the old blues albums would sound more like thne-contemporary ZZ Top. This was obviously an affront for old fans of the band, who recoiled in horror when The Sixpack came out in 1987, and those old albums didn't sound anything like they did originally. 

Old school fans were aghast and despite its ubiquity in the late 80s and early 90s, The Sixpack was easily one of the most hated big archival releases of a major band. But, as I said: That sound is my ZZ Top sound, and so I went on the hunt for The Sixpack, which got deleted in the early 200s, though it took another ten years or so until finally all the songs off the old albums came out in their original form in the early 2010s. Happily, a blog concentrating on 80s music, and I mean really 80s sounding music, had a copy of that box set, which is the foundation of most of Greatest HIIIts...And Missus. So, if you're a ZZ Top or blues-rock purist, stranger, you might want to bypass this. 

If, like me, however, the synth-tech, almost New Wave-sound of early-to late 1980s ZZ Top is your thing, as it is mine, then by all means stick around. In order to not make the title a complete lie, I included their three biggest hits, a.k.a. the three big Eliminator singles, in later live versions. And I added a couple of more old-school sounding tracks, after the band slowly stripped away the excesses of the mid-80s in the early 1990s: 1994's "Breakaway" and "I Gotsta Get Paid" from 2012s La Futura, the last album made with Dusty Hill, and also their last studio album to date, which it will probably stay. By this time, Gibbons' voice has definitely gotten a good bit (okay, fine, a lot) more husky and rough, but still, one of the highlights of their very mixed 21st Century output. 

A couple of times on these pages you've heard about a single disc comp growing completely out of proportions and becoming a two-disc proposition, but this is one of the rare cases where I actually deleted some tracks for a better overall flow and listenability. This has so far in One Buck Records history only happened with the first compilation of Aerosmith's Geffen era material. Like Aerosmith, ZZ Top have their own style and groove, and if you're down with those, you can have a fabulous time, but like the Glimmer Twins & bandmates, it's a relatively limited sound. They have a little more variety than notorious three riff band AC/DC (even if it's really good three riffs), but there still is a sameyness here that could get a little tiresome as the original comp crept easily over the 70 minute mark. So I deleted four tracks and completely reworked the sequencing into what I think is now a really neat and pretty hot 64 minute affair. That's probably about as much ZZ Top as one can take in one listen.

So, Greatest HIIIts...And Missus maybe isn't what you'd expect from the band, but is possibly still worth a listen to what is now a double anachronism. You might not have wanted these songs in these versions in the first place, but now a comp like this is the only place to listen to them. So, if you're courageous, leave your hipster cards also at the door, and rejoin 70s ZZ Top in their glammed up 80s suits...

I Went To Sea Today, So You'll Also Get To Go To Sea Again...

I didn't necessarily think I'd repost this again today, but, you know, life. I am currently on holidays, enjoying a couple of days by the sea. Which means that from time to time by the ocean, I began to sing or hum one of my beloved Gordon Lightfoot shanties, mostly "Christian Island" or parts of the "Seven Island Suite". And, well, guess where I went today? Why, around the seven islands, of course! Not Gordo's seven islands, of course. Of the coast here - which carries the interesting - and fitting! - name Pink Granite Coast, because the stone is, well, granite of a pinkish color. It's a really localized thing, only 8 km of shoreline form the Pink Granite Coast. And in front og that coast, there is a small archipelago called les sept isles, the seven islands, which are a protected nature reserve mostly made from inhabitable rock, inhabited by a dozen different species of birds - including hundreds of gannets and dozens of puffins - and a family of seals. 

So, obviously I hummed and partially sang "Seven Island Suite" for the rest of the day, which was spent on the beach. And one side effect is obviously, that getting to our holiday home, I had to put on some Gordon Lightfoot. And now that I'm close to the sea, so will you, if you hav'nt checked out my little compilation of Lightfoot's seafaring songs, Shanties. As before, ten fine tracks including classics like "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald", "High And Dry" and the aforementioned tracks. 

So, set sail again with Mr. Lightfoot. And of course there will be new music coming your way this weekend. Now, bring me that horizon...

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...