Days Of Thunder, The Driver And The Last Note Of Freedom

Yup, as foretold in the write-up to Reid's Digest - The Music Of Terry Reid, we're not quite finished with Mr. Reid yet. I'm going to deep dive a bit into what basically amounts to a tiny footnote in Reid's long and storied career - but you know what they say: to some it's a tiny footnote, to others it's an enigma wrapped in a conundrum. Actually, no one ever says that, because I just made it up, but yeah, even an ultimately insignificant thing can be of great interest to, well, me, and possibly by proxy some of you. Or I'll waste my time writing this, because a ton of you don't even bother with the write-up and go straight to check out the download. Anyway, it's not like you can stop me or anything, so here goes.

Thursday I talked about my first run-ins with the music of Terry Reid, but the biggest surprise was, when I finally checked out the rest of his discography about eight years ago or so. When I got to The Driver - the album - and to "The Driver" - the song - my mind was blown, almost as soon as the first notes came up. Waitaminute, I said to myself, that's the opening of Days Of Thunder's 'title song' "The Last Note Of Freedom", as sung by Mr. David Coverdale. I hadn't known until then that there had been a first stab at a title song for the movie courtesy of Mr. Reid, nor was I ready for the song itself. Having been brought up with "The Last Note Of Freedom" for , oh, the last 30+ years, "The Driver (Part 2)", as its called on the album blew me away with its enigmatic, elliptic lyrics. Just take the opening stanza: "Wake up alone and find / it's the wheels just rollin' in my mind / Can't stop to think or see / is this really what God cut for me?" And from there, the song gets only more mysterious with its reference to "the old boys / runnin' in the night / cross the borders, between their own headlights". What. The. Hell. 

The perfect cover art for Reid's album...you can almost imagine the movie in your head. In black and white, of course. 

The story of the twice done title song of Days Of Thunder became a little bit clearer after the internet snooping. Reid had bumped into Trevor Horn around 1987, and, maybe surprising given hi proclivities as artist in The Buggles (and BugglYes), Horn was a fan of Reid's work and told him he's love to work with him. Horn then also introduced Reid a year and a half or so later to a young German composer who had recently hit town to take over the baton from former German Hollywood transplant Harald Faltermeyer and was starting to make a break in movie scoring. Little did Reid or Horn know at the time that younh Hans Zimmer was to become one of the most well-known and dominant film scorers of the last two and a half decades. Zimmer and Horn had worked together almost a decade earlier, when Horn was in The Buggles and Zimmer did some collaborative work, even briefly showing up in the hugely influential "Video Killed The Radio Star" video clip. Zimmer had just had his Hollywood breakthrough with the lauded score to Rain Man, and was now developing the music for another picture starring Tom Cruise, the stock-car racing action drama, or, as it was informally known 'Top Gun with cars'. 

Zimmer had just worked up a keyboard melody as the title music for Days Of Thunder, and proposed Terry Reid write some lyrics for it and finish the song. Which he did, cue "The Driver", produced by Horn. To say that this was not what the soundtrack producers were expecting is probably an understatement. "The Driver" uses Zimmer's melody effectively, but the song is decidedly not what you'd want as a lead song for a big, dumb summer blockbuster. It's too interior, too enigmatic, and frankly, way too weird. So "The Driver" got rejected for consideration as the Days Of Thunder title song in a somewhat fitting, if sad, twist that recalls Reid's career. So, it was back to work for Zimmer. He had relished the chance to work with Jeff Beck for the Thunderv score, so the new title song was clearly going to have a more hard rock bent. New lyrics were commissioned by noted Shakespeare-ian British scribe William Broad a.k.a. Billy Idol, and The Cruiser himself asked David Coverdale personally if he could come in and sing the new title song, "The Last Note Of Freedom". 

Also b& w, but no film with this. At least none I'd want to watch.

Now, music snob logic would dictate that I hate the dumb hard rock "Note" and favor "The Driver". But here's the twist: I love "The Last Note Of Freedom". As an example for L.A. AOR rock of the late EIghties, you can hardly do better. Beck riffs on guitar, Coverdale wails on vocals - it's all good! My favorite moment is actually the quietest in the whole song, when midway after a dramatic break, the music comes on as an acoustic guitar strum and Coverdale sings "You know the suffering will end, my friend, when the last note of freedom is rung throughout the land." The suffering will end, my friend, I always found that little phrase comforting. The ladmittedly sometimes jibberish lyrics of "The Last Note Of Freedom"- other than working in the movie title in one of its lines - are not about racing and could just as well be used for a historical drama about struggling for freedom. The fit is of course in the music and the sound of "The Last Note Of Freedom". That song sounds like it belongs in a Tony Scott film - it's big and brash and shiny and built for maximum effect. "The Driver", inversely, is none of that. Reid's song sounds like it should accompany a Monte Hellman film, an updated version of his cultish Two Lane Blacktop (starring James Taylor and Dennis Wilson) maybe, an existentialist, downbeat drama about a guy broken by his obsession with driving. Come to think of it - I'd watch that movie. Yo, Cruiser, you want another run at an Oscar - how about The Driver, where Cole Trickle is now an old, washed-up, borderline sociopathic guy who can't go without racing, even at senior age, somehow looking for redemption, perhaps in the arms of a good woman? Just thank me in your Oscar speech, Tommy Boy... 

As a song, "The Driver" is better than "The Last Note Of Freedom" - it's more intense, personal and doesn't deal in clumsily glued together clichés, but it was simply the wrong song at the wrong place at the wrong time. So while I protest that Reid's song has somewhat fallen into oblivion, I can not fault the Days Of Thunder people to want to go with something else. At least they offered Terry Reid a consolation price: For an action scene involving drivers voluntarily bumping into each other, they used The Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'", but instead of also licensing it for the soundtrack, they asked Reid to record a cover version, again produced by Tervor Horn. And even if it was a consolation price, they worked hard to work up some royalties for Reid, issuing it as the b-side of both singles taken from the soundtrack. And it's a pretty fun version of the song, with Reid as usual singing the hell out of what's in front of him. But it isn't "The Driver".

If you have downloaded and listened to Reid's Digest - The Music Of Terry Reid, you will be familiar with my 'Pray For Headlights mix' of "The Driver". Normally my little reworkings don't necessarily need some annotation, but I feel I should say a word or three about it. The original plan was to avoid the akward Part 1 and Part 2 set up of the album, so I wanted to combine the two parts, but needed some sort of concept that makes sense. So I had the idea of a car crash towards the end of the full-fledged version leading into the short acoustic part as a sort of faint echo in the afterlife once the driver perished in that car crash. I don't know if anyone read that song's structure like that, but that was the thinking behind it.

Oh boy, this is getting long, so I wasn't lying when I said 'deep dive', but it's also plain to see why this stuff wasn't a good fit for thursday's piece. Now of course you know more then you ever wanted to know about either title song of Days Of Thunder. So, quickly off to today's download, because yes, there is one. The Crashing Thunder EP alternates Reid's and Zimmer's/Coverdale's contributions to Days Of Thunder, giving you the two parts of "The Driver", the original album version of "The Last Note Of Freedom" and its instrumental arrangement, as well as Reid's "Gimme Some Lovin'". And for the music lover who has everything, a short piece of Jeff Beck working out the guitar riff for "Note". And I end with the Pray For Headlights mix of "The Driver" which made sense to me, but which you can delete if you already have Reid's Digest and don't want double versions in your music collection. 

So, deep dive over, and for now we're done with Mr. Reid, and our regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly. In the meantime, rock and roll - especially the latter - with some driving music from 1990..."but the wheels just bearing down..."

Reid's Digest - Celebrating The Music Of Terry Reid

My way to Terry Reid wasn't as straightforward as some others, obviously because Terry's heyday - as much as he had one - was way before my time - both lifetime and music listening time. So the person to bring me to Terry Reid's music was...Rob Zombie! Yup, shlock rock grunter Zombie turned shlock shock horror film director Zombie. I absolutely hated House Of A 1.000 Corpses when it came out, and was more than dubious about its follow-up The Devil's Rejects. And while Zombie's grinning sadism isn't as entertaining or funny as he thinks ut is, at least Rejects was a hundred times better visually than the epilepsy-inducing Corpses. Zombie also got another thing right: the soundtrack, filling up his movie with classic rock from the 70s, the time frame of the movie. And while I could have gone without him styling his merry mass murdererd into martyrs tduring a long slow-motion shootout set to the entire full-length "Freebird", his other choices were better, especially the opening titles with its freeze frames being set to The Allman Brothers' immortal "Midnight Rider" and two tracks that sounded great, from an artiost unknown to me: That artist was of course Terry Reid, with a trio of tracks off Seed Of Memory, "Brave Awakening", "To Be Treated Rite" and the title track. For some reason, I didnt investigate further. 

The second run-in with Reid was a couple of years later, when River fell into my hands. I had heard of it as some kind of cult record, and the essay in the booklet does a great selling job of making it sound like an underappreciated classic - but yeah, I don't get it. For once, Allmusic is spot on: There is an amiable, relaxed vibe to the songs, but they sound unfinished, like a guy working out some tunes in the studio, then releasing these bits before they've developed into real songs. The essay actually touches on this, talking about "songs without lyrics, lyrics without songs", with Reid not being able to find words for some songs and sometimes not being able to sing over the existing backing tracks. Anyway, so River again temporarily quieted down my interest in Reid, until a couple of years ago I checked out his entire discography, with interesting results. 

Reid's music is interesting in that, like a river, it seems to go with the flow of whatever his mood was, and with which musical friends and partners he hung out. His first albums are still really heavy on blues-rock and loud guitars, as well as superboosting old standards with crunchy guitars. River was, well, jam- and improvisation-heavy. Seeds Of Memory three years later showed how he had made friends with some of the West Coast crew, notably Graham Nash, leaning into a more acoustic South Cali vibe. Rogue Waves three years later, maybe as a belated reaction to punk , new wave and and the beginning of post-punk, showing him as a guitar hero again, literally in the case of the front cover. And his comeback album, The Driver in 1991, was heavily influenced - for better or worse, arguably worse - by his burgeoning frinedship/partnership with Trevor Horn, which means lots of chunky keyboard and a real glossy mainstream sound, that Reid himself later derided as "unlistenable".

There is, however, also a less charitable way to look at Reid's dispersing or developing work. The fact that there are only six studio albums through a career spanning almost fifty years, and all of them appeard on a different record label shows that stability, long-term investment and support by record labels weren't on the menu, and finally the artist's own issues, creatively and otherwise, reared their head, that prevented Terry Reid from becoming a household name, despite being an idol to many in the music business. Every obit that is coming out these days is of course going to mention that Reid ws asked to front Led Zeppelin, but politely declined, and then suggested Robert Plant as lead singer. But Reid could never really pull it together, to stay with a label and develop his music. After his first two records, when he was still sold as somewhat of a teen idol, the next three records followed in intervals of three or more years of each other, an eternity in those days. So whatever momentum Reid got going with an at least artistically interesting or lauded record dissipated, together with label relations. 

Despite these changes in musical direction and musical homes, Reid could always be counted on to deliver some quality cuts, and Reid's Digest - The Music of Terry Reid is supposed to showcase that, while also giving folks a couple of song that they might not have already. When I heard of his death two days ago, I finally got myself to sit down and put together a Terry Reid compilation that I had been planning for a long time. At first I wanted to just reuse a comp I did for myself a couple of years ago, but finally - as these things tend to - the project got a lot more work-heavy, as I finally relistened to a ton of tracks and switched at least half of the line-up, did some editing and necessary volume equalizing, etc. yadda yadda yadda. Of course I had too many tracks to fit onto a CD-length comp (I know, I know, sue me...), so I had to drop a couple, rethink and replace again, and so forth.

But now I think I've landed on a compilation that represents pretty well all sides of Terry Reid. This isn't a greatest hit record of any type, even if he didn't really have any, but I didn't include his version of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", for example, which is his early signature song. But like a lot of the heavier numbers from his first to records (Bang Bang You're Terry Reid and Terry Reid) his singing syle on these songs is a little too shouty for me, as if he had to show how gritty he was by accentuating a clipped, growling vocal style. So, from these albums I tended to take the more melodic, well-sung numbers, while still letting Reid cause a ruckus on tracks such as "Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace". 

River, as described above, is a bit of a particular case, as it's an important album in Reid's thin discography, but I'm not a fan, so while I included the title cut (in an alternate take), I otherwise used outtakes from the River sessions ("Anyway", "Let's Go Down") that I prefer to most of the songs that made the cut. As also said above, my first entranceway to Reid's music was Seed Of Memory - and more precisely that album's first side - which is presented here in its entirety. Rogue Waves was a more workmanlike effort at a time when he really could have used a hit, so I only kept his heartfekt version of "(All I Have To Do Is) Dream". And then of course Reid went radio silent for a decade, as the Eighties barely had any use for rock'n'roll heroes of the 70s, and no use for a niche figure like him. His fortunes changed when he hooked up with pop megaproducer Trevor Horn, from the ensuing album The Driver I kept the only acoustic tune, the lovely "Hand of Dimes", the admittedly slightly overproduced "The Whole Of The Moon" (which has great impassioned vocals by Reid, though) and the title track that I've edited into a very specific - and obviously eclusive to this comp - version. I'll have more things to say about "The Driver", but that would explode all reasonable word limits, so I'll keep that for another write-up, possibly coming quite soon. 

For now, I let you rummage through some of the best music that Terry Reid had to offer, even when audiences wasn't always willing and ready to lend their ears. A cult figure among cult figures, Terry Reid coul've been a contender, he could've been somebody...and he has the tunes to back this statement up. So enjoy Reid's Digest - The Music Of Terry Reid, and I might be back with more stuff to say about the man soon. Until then, let the bends and turns of the river of Reid's inspiration take you away...

R.I.P. Terrance James Reid, 1949 - 2025

(N)One Album Wonders: Inlaws, Outlaws And Terry Dolan

The music industry, man. Sometimes you just don't get it. No, strike that, most of the times you don't get it. And that's me talking about the old music business, not the streaming-based, 'millions of streams will buy me a box of Pringles, so I'll shell out these mega deluxe editions and special VIP concert tickets for a couple of hundred bucks' system of today. Whatever goes into calculations, into their prognostics, and margin calculations, and spreadsheets, about - as Bob Seger sang "what to leave in, what to leave out", but when the music gets left lying in the dirt, and it's great music, then all this calculatin' really don't end up. 

No one is entirely sure as to why exactly Terry Dolan's (presumably) self-titled album never got released in its day. Some think it's because in demand pianist and Rolling Stones sideman-cum-producer Nicky Hopkins abandoned the sessions halfway through, some because Warner Brothers were cleaning house...but no one knows for sure. The whole story gets told in details in the booklet included with our One Buck Record of the day, so I'll just say this: Whoever took that decision was a total idiot (cue GOB-voice: "I think I've made a huge mistake"). Sometimes records get buried, that aren't a huge loss. Some, as Terry Dolan's, were a huge loss. But what really gets me is that here Warner Brothers had a finished record, with a song that was almost certainly going to be a hit...and yet they let it all go away.

But let's rewind a little bit. And say a word or two about who the hell Terry Dolan is (the bootleg accompanying the album explains all of this in huge detail). If you are from the Bay area, you've probably heard of Terry Dolan, at least through his group Terry & The Pirates, the ultimate bar band. If you haven't, well, Dolan started as a folkie who, as he'd sing in his signature song "Inlaws And Outlaws" "came out from the East Coast", trading the Washington D.C. folk scene for that of San Francisco in 1965, then becoming known as a guy who played too hard and rock'n'roll for a folkie and too soft for a rock'n'roller. Hanging out with Greg Douglass, fuitar player for Country Weather, made him switch from acoustic to electric guitar. In 1970 he asked new Bay era resident Nicky Hopkins to produce a two-song demo tape, that included"Inlaws And Outlaws" and "Angie", a ballad written for his wife, both of which figure of course on the One Buck Record of the day. 

The story of "Inlaws And Outlaws" is as fascinating as it is frustrating: The hit that wasn't a record, and then never would be. DJs, first at San Fran's K-SAN and KMPX would play the demo tape version of the song, which became an airplay hit that even began to spread throughout the U.S., but callers enquiring about the song were disappointed, as there was no official single yet. An album with Warner Brothers was negotiated, with the understanding that Hopkins would again produce. In January 1972 Dolan, Hopkins and a hand-picked band of all-star Bay area pickers (including Douglass, Steve Miller Band-bass player Lonnie Turner, and of course John Cippolina, who had already contributed to the demo tape) Wally Heider's San Fran studios and started working on the album, recording what would become side one of Terry Dolan. 

These numbers live up to the 'folk rock'n'roller' reputation of Dolan, with crunchy guitars aplenty, and Hopkins especially piling on the multi tracks and flourishes in his part of the record. The Pointer Sisters, still months away from issuing their debut album, add lavish background vocals. Hopkins himself cheekily inserts a very Stones-ian melody about two and a half minutes into opening number "See What Your Love Can Do", a gospel-rave up. "Angie", the ode to his wife is followed by another guitar-based uptempo number, "Rainbow", before side a ends with what should have been Dolan's classic hit that we still hear on classic rock radio to this day. Quality work all around, and then disaster struck. With only these four finished tracks in the can, Hopkins was called up by The Rolling Stones to do overdubs on Exile On Main Street, then leave for a U.S. tour, then immediately go back to the studio to work on Goat's Head Soup. All of a sudden, Dolan's album was without a producer. 

After a break of almost six months, sessions restarted with Pete Sears as producer (and bass, piano, and keyboard player), who drafted in Neal Schon, right in between leeaving Santana and founding Journey, who shredded like crazy on "Purple An Blonde..?" and "Burgundy Blues", the two heaviest tracks on the Sears-produced second album side, while a cover of J.J. Cale's "Magnolia" and "To Be For You (a pure Sears/ Dolan collaboration) were more melodic. With the album finished, photos for the artwork were shot by Herb Greene, the record got a catalogue number, labels and test pressings. Warner Brothers created a bio for Dolan and a write-up, and then - cancelled the record, as well as summarily dropping Dolan from the label. What should have been - on the strength of "Inlaws And Outlaws" alone - if not a hit, then a more than decent debut by a major talent, turned into a great mess of frustration for Dolan and all the involved players and friends, musical and otherwise.  

Reasons for this suden and seemingy inexplicable cancellation abound, but answers aren't easy to come by. Just the sad fact remains, that a great record was shelved and then forgotten about for more than forty years, and by the time Terry Dolan's solo debut album finally came out in 2016, its author was dead, dying in 2012 of heart failure. He had seen the beginning of the campaign to finally get Terry Dolan issued, but wouldn't live to see it arrive in record stores. 

Why and how was he deprived of seeing the results of those sessions proudly as a finished record? And how many people were deprived of driving down the highway with a window rolled down, fist in the air and loudly proclaiming "Living! My Life! Free!"? Well, way too many. The sad story of how Warner Brothers fucked up, and would so again with Bob Carpenter shortly after, despite its reputation in the 70s as an 'artists first' label, reminds me of the mess they are right now, especially its movie division. You might have heard about a fella named David Zaslav who hates audiences and artists and movies and would rather turn an almost finished or finished film on which hundreds of people worked into a line in a spread sheet for a tax write-off. Big entertainment companies - music, film, TV, it doesn't matter - of course always cared about the dollar first and the artists second, but a company like Warner Brothers who always had a good reputation as being welcoming to artists, has now left that reputation in tatters. 

Oh well. Time doesn't heal all wounds, but this album sounded great in 1972 when it should have come out, and it sounds great now. A couple of weeks ago, over at Babs' place, she asked about what everyone's favorite unreleased music was. Well, this is mine. Just a top notch 70s album, halfway between folk and a rollicking Rolling Stones record. This album is a killer, and I'm happy, if a couple of you will discover it. 

Against The Current: The Lost Marillion Album, or Fish's Last Stand.

If the band had known how close to the truth the title of their 1987 album Clutching At Straws came, they might have wanted to reconsider. Then again, Fish's tales of the tortured rock star Torch was nakedly autobiographical, with its harrowing account of Fish's worsening alcoholism in "Just For The Record" ("Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways / But When ut gets right down to it it's the same drunk haze") and "Sugar Mice" ("So if you want my adress it's number one at the end of the bar"), disillusion with the life as a rock star ("We're terminal cases that keep talking medicine / pretending the end isn't quite near / we make futile gestures, act to the cameras / with our made up faces and PR smiles") and overall atmosphere of despair. Don't get me wrong, Clutching At Straws isn't nearly as miserable-sounding as these lines make it sound, in fact, rarely has extended misery sounded as enticing and seductive as on Clutching At Straws. But all was indeed not well for Fish, and for his band mates in Marillion.

The success of Misplaced Childhood and number one smash "Kayleigh" had put the band into an endless cycle of touring, doing promotion and finally recording a new record. The sessions for Clutching At Straws had already proven to be difficult, with the dreaded 'musical differences' causing more than a few arguments, often in different states of intoxication, between band members. Then it was on the road again, tiredlessly, only to get back together to plot a follow up record. The band members were all tired, and tired of each other, when they reconvened. Fish usually complained about the music the rest of the band was working on "being shite", and the band members returned the compliments concerning his lyrics. In between all this strife, the band somehow managed to go into a studio called Tone Deaf (a sign? an omen?) to cut demos of four songs, then holed up in an isolated castle - clearly the most sensible idea fdor five often drunk guys starting to hate each other - to write, and managed to other demos of songs, before Fish announced his resignation from the band, and Marillion, for all intents and purposes, broke up. 

"Ha, photobomb, guys, technically I'm already gone..."

Marillion was reborn in short order, of course, recruitiong Steve Hogarth as new lead singer, and using a ton of the musical ideas the band had worked on in early 1988 for use on 1989's Seasons End, while Fish took a bunch of his lyrics to use on his next three solo albums. A live album (The Thieving Magpie) closed out the Fish era in a rather underwhelming way. This is of course the moment, where the One Buck Guy's alternate history generator goes into overdrive: What if EMI had insisted on one last Fish-led studio album? What if Fish, after long and unpleasant negociations, agrees that the band can use the demos they cut in early 1988, but refuses to go back into the studio to record anything else and forbids the band to record anything else for that album without him? 

Faced with Fish's 'take it or leave it' proposition and a demo tape of six songs, some not even fnished, the guys at EMI face a problem: These songs do not an album make, as a matter of fact, they're barely more than half an album. Faced with this dilemma, they go back to the vaults, and decide to go right back to the beginning of the band, promoting Fish's last album as a 'now and then' proposition. They pick the band's early epic "Grendel" as a way to fill out the album, only slightly regretting having used the original b-side version on the stopgap compilation album B'Sides Themselves earlier in the year. A solution is found: An alternate version, cut at Fair Deal Studios, is a rarity the fans don't have and can thus fulfill its function as quality filler to go with the material recorded, which also includes "Beaujolais Day", an unused song from the Clutching At Straws sessions. Thus, Against The Current is born, with title and artwork being a wink at the situation the band and its estranged lead singer were in. 

[Alternate History Generator Off]

So, Against the Current. "Beaujolais Day" is a fine, energetic opener, giving way to "Tic-Tac-Toe", "Sunset Hill", "Exile on Princes Street" and "Story From A Thin Wall" as the atmospheric ending of Side A. Side B would then open with the short "Shadows On The Barley", give way to the Fair Deal version of "Grendel" and then close out with the short instrumental "Voiceless In The Crowd". In order to create Against The Current I had to work with the fact that "Tic-Tac-Toe" and "Shadows On The Barley" were incomplete and stopped abruptly, but other than a quick fade out at an appropriate moment there wasn't much else I could do. And "Voiceless In The Crowd" was originally an entire song called "Voice In The Crowd", but there was something off about the track. The drumming sounded weird, and the entire track had this weird Phil Collins vibe to it, as well as sounding pretty samey to some of the songs on side one. So I basically got rid of the song and only kept the parts I liked, which was the beautiful opening and the closing of the song with some beautiful guitar playing. And since there is no more voice, well, voiceless, geddit?! 

This isn't in any wy a 'great lost album', but an eminently listenable album full of fine moments that deserve better than to be soon forgotten bonus tracks, so that's exactly what Against The Current delivers. Sure, some of it isn't as polished as the group's studio creations - given that these were simple guiding demos, but as a goodbye to Fish and Mark I of the band, I don't think I'm clutching at straws when I say that Against The Current is a pretty decent send off. Listen, and see if you'll agree.  

If you are shaking a tree, but no one's there to see it, does it really move?

I never went to see Shaking Tree in concert. I never bought one of their three albums. And now I regret that I never did and never will. On one hand, Shaking Tree are, literally, like thousands of other bands: College rock from a band formed in college, get a loyal local following, bring out some records and grow their following, are on the edge of signing with a major label, and then - boom, nothing. Band is gone, their records are gone. I think about all these other bands who dreamed to go bigger than local, the elation they must have felt when that first album was out. And I'm thinking about all the music that is now lost, probably forever. Sure, some of these albums still exist, maybe in some cutout bins in whatever record stores still exist, but more likely in the garages or basements of people who liked the band back in the days and haven't thrown them in the trash, yet. But if you were a fan from when the band existed, so between 1995 and 2007, you are now middle-aged, have your I-Phone or Alexa play music and probably got rid of your CDs at least a decade ago. The title of this write-up is of course a riff on a very well known saying/philosophical riddle, but its aim is the same: What does it mean for Shaking Tree and its music if no one remembers them? 

To be fair, when I first heard of the band, I was still getting my feet under me, in a strange place, in a strange land. It was literally my first day of university classes, and the band - eager to grow their local fanbase among freshmen I imagine - had pinned a couple of maxi-CDs for promo purposes on the announcement boards in university building hallways, together with a reminder where they'd play that weekend. Not knowing any of the music clubs in town, nor having yet a reliable crew of friends to join me, I passed on that concert, though I did pocket the CD, played it once, thought 'hey, that's pretty neat' and then left things there. 

A couple of years ago, on a whim, going through my old Maxi CDs  I threw in that Shaking Tree promo disc and was blown away by how great "Memory Of Me" sounded. Shaking Tree's music with its reliance on mandolin and/or violin to fuel their songs is definitely different from the usual drums-bass-guitar four piece. Founder, lead singer and songwriter Dain Estes originally wanted the band to sound like Talking Heads circa Naked, with World Music beats and influences, but after cycling through dozens of band band members settled on a four piece with him on vocals, guitar and mandolin, plus a violin player, bassist and drummer. He found a reliable vioolonist in Dan Waddington, who stayed with Shaking Tree throughout most of its tewelve year run, whereas the staff turnover in the rhythm section was more frequent. 

Shaking Tree didn't and don't sound much like Talking Heads, but they do have a slight resemblance to the Dave Matthews Band who started to blow up at the time Shaking Tree were active. I never had much use for the Dave Matthews Band, finding most of their material bland and boring, and while the sound and feel throughout these ten Shaking Tree numbers and three Dain Estes solo tracks doesn't change much, it's more lively and memorable than its much better known counterpart, at least for my money. 

This is some fabulous music, and I'm happy I at least still have those thirteen tracks, even if that's all that remains, here, 4550 miles from where the band once roamed. And yet I have a drink and a thought for the thousands of bands whose music lies now on obsolete albums in an obsolete format in obsolete record collections. Or landfill. A drink to all those who made music when they were young, or younger, who continue to make music, for ten or ten thousands of people. Keep on making that music, and we'll keep on listening. And maybe we'll find local bands like Shaking Tree that left no footprint, but the ones in the fading memories and music collections of those that were there. Or almost there, like me. 

For those about to rock, in adulation or anonymity, we salute you. 

Gordon Lightfoot And The Last Disc Problem

And so this is it, folks, the temporary end of the road for the career-spanning Gordon Lightfoot box set I put together, now complete with Volume Three. And inevitably, as with most career retrospectives, we now run into what is known as the Last Disc Problem, something a music fan who has listened to a boxset or five will be familiar with. If a retrospective follows an artist to the end, a gradual decline sets in, some time after the halfway point and, in a multiple disc box set, noticably on the last disc. Thus, the Last Disc Problem, as the high quality of the preceding discs simply isn't there. This is also true for our last run through Gordon Lightfoot's discography, unfortunately. A Life In Song Vol. 3 - River Of Light isn't as constantly great as the first two discs, which would have been a pretty high bar to clear either way. (I know, I'm doing quite the sales job for today's One Buck Record of the day, huh?!). But there is something to be said for sticking it out to the end - both for the artist, and its audience. And I can't think of many others who stuck it out until the end like Gordon Lightfoot did. And there is still plenty of great music here

When we first hear Lightfoot at the beginning of River Of Light, during rousing opener "I'd Do It Again", his voice is still strong. Summertime Dream is in many ways Gordon's last hurrah, both in commercial terms and as a songwriter of consistently high quality output.Everything else afterwards has to be qualified in some way. This would sadly be proven true by 1978's Endless Wire, the first disappointment after a long string of good to very good albums. "Handdog Hotel Room", like "I'd Do It Again" an ode to Lightfoot's relentless touring, and "Sweet Guinevere" are the top picks from an underwhelming album, mired in surprisingly awful production by Lenny Waronker, and with the most atrocious cover art of any Lightfoot album to add insult to injury. "Endless Wire should have been called 'Endless touring makes you tired'", said James Chrispell stingingly but correctly in his review for Allmusic to explain the bored, and boring-sounding material here and concluded, also correctly, "the downward slide had begun".  

Porn mustache + porn sunglasses = good job, guys, let's take this pic for the cover...

1980's Dream Street Rose was a much better effort by both Waronker and Lightfoot. The former (with some help from fellow VIP WB producer Russ Titleman) went back to a much more synpathetic production reminiscent of his mid-70s work, while Lightfoot simply wrote a better batch of songs, including "Ghosts Of Cape Horn", "On The High Seas" and the title track. But that album was indeed the end of the road for that producer-artist tandem that ran for a decade and eight albums, nine if you count the re-recorded first half of Gord's Gold. This is truly the last old-school sounding record of Lightfoot's career. 

1982's Shadows was produced by Lightfoot and Ken Friesen, and it was the start of Lightfoot's MOR/Adult Contemporary period, where acoustic instruments and orchestrations are now replaced by synthesizers everywhere. but it is a surprisingly strong record, something Lightfoot himself considered so. He was disappointed by the album's commercial failure, calling the album "the music industry's best-kept secret". Upon relistening for this project, I was surprised how many tunes I liked from an album I had written off as adult contemporary pap. Conseuqently, Shadows gets a whooping four selections - the most of any album post-Summertime Dream - on River Of Light, including the rousing seafaring tale "Triangle (formerly featured on Shanties), the stock-taking "In My Fashion" and the moody "Heaven Help The Devil". 

Waitaminute, guys...what was the title again? Was it Shadows or Soft Focus? 

Salute one year later, howver, saw Lightfoot sucumb to the trends of the days, as it is his most 80's sounding album, and I don't mean that in a good way. A plastic drum sound, electric guitars and keyboard swashes everywhere, together with a sometimes forced-sounding optimism make for akward listening, the romantic acoustic troubadour of old now sounding like he'd want to compete with Kenny Rogers and the like.  Thus, the two most old-fashioned and folky numbers, "Whispers Of The North" and "Tattoo" have been selected for inclusion from what is ultimately a misbegotten attempt to update his sound. 

The nadir of Lightfoot's glossy AOR/adult contemporary period is 1986's East Of Midnight, which has such a slick, synthetic production that even the few memorable songs inevitably suffer from it. Album highlight "A Passing Ship" survives intact, but for the other highlight "I'll Tag Along" - which Lightfoot began to perform as a solo acoustic song after the breaks in his shows - shows up here as a solo song, though played on eletric guitar, for a TV Special in 1991. It's much better than the glossy, overproduced version from East Of Midnight. 

Not sure how that cover could possibly scream 'adult contemporary' more if it wanted to...

Sandwiched in betwen these two songs is a possibly surprising selection. Fascinatingly, the exact things that essentially killed the utterly useless modern re-recordings on Gord's Gold Vol. 2 are responsable for the one song that is a success: "The Pony Man", originally from Sit Down Young Stranger/If You Could Read My Mind, and thus easily the oldest song on the set, is like the rest filled with keyboards that replace the original acoustic framework. But here it actually works!The synth backing is atmospheric, rather than distracting, maybe because the song itself is essentially a children's dream tale, with the slightly otherwordly keyboard backing conjuring a fitttingly dream-like atmosphere and thus adding to the song, rather than subtracting, as on every other remake from the disc. 

1993's Waiting For You, Lightfoot's comeback after he had declared giving up writing and recording (though not touring) after East Of Midnight's commercial failure, was hailed as a return to form and to a more fitting acoustic sound, even though for my personal taste a lot of it is still way too glossy. The title track and "Only Love Would Know" are the top picks from the album. 

Not as gritty as the cover suggests, but a step in the right direction...

The mid-90's is unfortunately also the time when Lightfoot's voice really started to get compromised. The muddled, fussy, keyboard-heavy arrangements Lightfoot leaned on were maybe also a way to try and compensate for Lightfoot's weakening singing voice, which lost range, power and stamina. Lightfoot started to be unable to hit prolonged notes, with his singing becoming clipped and wispy. You can hear that once strong voice decaying at unfortunate speed. It's already getting quite thin on 1999's A Painter Passing Through, notably on the title track and a couple of others, so I chose the two tracks ("Ringneck Loon" and "Uncle Toad Said") that reunited good songwriting with a stronger vocal performance. 

2004's Harmony was recorded after a major health scare for Lightfoot, and was constructed by his band around Lightfoot's vocals from his demos, which some critics used to explain the less-than-great vocal performance. But it ultimately probably wouldn't have mattered. Harmony is, other than as a welcome sign of life, a relatively forgettable album.  And yet it yielded a single classic, the newly minted title song for this volume of A Life In Song, "River Of Light". If you listen past the clipped enunciation and increasingly nasal delivery that would define his final recordings, the song itself is great, easily his best in years. 

Lightfoot touring and recording well into his Eighties despite his voice now reduced to a wispy croak is nothing if not a lesson in persisting. Old Lightfoot becomes a bit the Don Quixote character he sang about, if I may paraphrase. "Singing in a whisper now, he sings in cities from shore to shore / 'till he can sing no more". So, I'm of two minds here: I don't know whether it's brave or foolhardy to go into a studio at over eighty years old, just with a guitar, and with your voice almost gone, and record a solo acoustic album. Probably a bit of both. Truthfully, most songs on Solo aren't great - as songs or performances - and when Lightfoot tries (and mostly fails) to whistle on "Dreamdrift" it's almost painful to listen to. Time and cigarettes and illness may have done a number on Lightfoot's voice, but he does not yield. There is something noble in an old warrior like Lightfoot going out on his shield like that. 

The two songs from Solo, "Return To Dust" and "Oh So Sweet" weren't necessarily planned or written as 'last songs', though they surely play that role well. For Solo, Lightfoot had discovered some demos from 2001 and 2002, tried to update and revise some of them (and failed) and finally recorded them as they were. Both are - whether planned or not - songs that illustrate the long goodbye, Lightfoot's and everybody's. Though his voice is now clearly as close to the end of the trail as Lightfoot himself, the lyrics are impressive. "Return To Dust" is a clear-eyed look back, including at his alcoholism: " They said drink and be restored / all I ever drank made me end up on the floor / and what is more a mind turned to rust that's for sure / we will return into dust through the years."

"O So Sweet" adds some more retrospection, as Lightfoot looks back bitter-sweetly on his life: "The road I chose was not all it should be / but sometimes it was oh so sweet", only to end up with some last words of wisdom for the last steps of the road: "Sometimes I remember seeing starlight fade / back when life was still only a mystery / was it good, was it bad, was it the best you ever had? / But sometimes it was oh so sweet". 

And so was your music, Gordon, so was your music. 

Thank you for the music of a lifetime. Thank you for letting me, and us, tag along. Thank you for everything, Gordon. 

Yours Truly,

the One Buck Guy

The End (Or The Oz Is Dead, Long Live The Oz)

As usual, just an hour or so after I put up a new post, news drops that another rock'n'roll legend has died. I didn't keep tabs on Ozzy Osbourne and his health, but from what I read about concerts, the Ozzster was doing them sitting down and cutting down on his concert length, because his health and stamina wouldn't allow for more. For his last ever show, Back To The Beginning (now unofficially known as The End, For Real This Time) about two weks ago, he sat on a black throne throughout, and the reunited Black Sabbath Mark 1 struggled to get through a short four song set, after a six song Ozzy solo set, and a ton of supporting acts, including Slayer, Pantera, Guns'n'Roses and Metallica. But all that doesn't matter. Ozzy got to go out the way he deserved to: on a big fuckin' stage, in front of a whole load of people. 

I can't in all honesty claim to be a huge Ozzy or Black Sabbath fan, I'm more of a 'Sabbath's first two albums and an Ozzy Greatest Hits package will do' kind of guy. Even though I always forget what a great tune "Crazy Train" is, until it comes on. But a post for and with the Oz feels appropriate, and it also gives me an excuse to get some crunchy rock'n'roll on this here blog, where in the last weeks we have been mostly acoustic and well-behaved. Well, enough of that for a second. Let's have Ozzy, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler throw down some heavy shit, shall we?

So today's very humble One Buck Record Of The Day is an EP, or strictly speaking half an EP. In 2016, to celebrate their The End tour - the last ever Black Sabbath live tour - they sold The End at concerts, an EP (actually, more like a double EP, or simply an album, at fifty-five minutes of length, which does indeed make it longer than 13 itself). The first half were Rick Rubin-produced outtakes from their 13 album, whereas the second half were live tracks. Those were strictIy of the o.k.-ish variety, so I only kept the studio tracks, which were surprisingly good for what are essentially outtakes and deserved to get a proper release either way. 

Rage Against The Machine's Brad Wilk is manning the drum set here for these four songs. "Season Of The Dead" opens with one of Iommi's doomiest riffs, before the vocals kick in, only to open up a machine gun fire of different riffs in the middle. As Ozzy said, when talking about the original sessions for 13 which started a mere 12 years (!) earlier: "Tony was still firing off these amazing heavy metal riffs. He just goes 'here you go' and comes out with one better than you've ever heard in your life. ". "Cry All Night has a neat little blues solo in the middle. "Take Me Home" bring sout more heavt riffage, while "Isolated Man" brings some distorted psychedelia into the mix. 

Speaking of the mix, this was one of the major criticisms of 13 and Rubin especially, with its extremely high loudness levels and high compression. You can hear this also on the four The End tracks, and while it's not a dealbreaker, it does position The End towards the tail end of the Loudness wars (ca. 2005-2015 I'd say). Still, this is probably as good as any latter-day veteran version of Black Sabbath was going to sound. Finally, The End - tour or EP - wasn't, as said above, the end. The end was the way back to beginning, just days before the real end for Ozzy. But The End does stand as a nice reminder of what Sabbath and consequently Oz were all about. Let it rip. 

R.I.P. John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne (1948-2025)

P.S.: Still on holidays here, folks, with a crap laptop (NEVER buy a Linux-based computer, folks!), so for once there is no artwork attached to the tracks... 

Bluegrass Chartbusters Ahead! Yeehaw and Hotdiggity!

If you have followed this blog for a bit, you already know that, when not listening to folks giving it a neo-traditional spin, I like my bluegrass...weird-ish. I'm down with folks putting hip hop and bluegrass together, and I'm down with a couple of Finns doing bluegrass covers of hard'n'heavy songs. So, it's fair to say I'm not a traditionalist. Still, I wouldn't have bet on engulfing myself as much as I did in bluegrass groups covering popular songs, and I certainly hadn't expected to do so with the help of the Pickin On... series. After albums highlighting bluegrass covers of single artists like Neil Young and Green Day, time to take it a step further and wander through more than fifty years of charts history...via the all-new Bluegrass Chartbusters series!

This album that runs through songs from 1968 to 2015 also doubles as a bit of a Best Of of Cornbread Red, for my money the best band that worked for CMH and the Pickin' On...-series. These guys burned brightly, and quickly - relatively speaking of course - going through ten tribute albums in three years...and then just vanished. Cornbread Red were built around three bluegrass veterans: Stan Dailey on lead vocals and bass, Marc Scott on banjo and mandolin, and Dennis Clifton on guitar, dobro and bouzouki. They recorded those famous blugrass tributes to, among others, Franz Ferdinand, Aerosmith, The Offspring, and Maroon 5, as well as doing the lion's share of the label's two classic rock tributes, from which a majority of their tracks were sourced. Bluegrass bands covering pop and rock songs can always come off as gimmicky and joke-y, and that's kind of the point in a way, but these guys actually found the essence of the songs, instead of just doing fun covers. 

Which means that their versions of these rock and pop classics (and semi-classics) have now supplanted the originals for me. Their version of "Comfortably Numb" is my favorite version of that song, bar none. I've never liked Roger Waters' vocals on the original. I've always liked the melody of "Here Without You" by Three Doors Down, but the compressed nu rock production didn't do it any favors. It's not needed anymore, as isn't the smooth sounds of Maroon 5, whose "You Will Be Loved" is much better as a bluegrass tune than a soft pop number. And finally, I'd probably go out and say that Cornbread Red's version of The Offspring's "Self-Esteem" is also my new favorite take on that number. I liked Steve'n'Seagulls' version fine enough, but that one really tipped over onto the humour side, whereas Cornbread Red's version really finds a sort of logical variation for it, protraying the protagonist loser like a country bumpkin who's getting abused and is too nice to do something about it. You should also check out what they do with Cheap Trick's "Surrender". Good stuff. 

The other 'name' band in CMH's employ is of course Iron Horse out of Alabama (below), who are taking care of the majority of the other tracks here, including Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son", a cool version of Steve Miller Band's "The Joker", lovely takes on Van Morrison' "Into The Mystic" and Elton John's "Rocket Man", as well as a cover of Kings Of Leon's "Molly's Chambers", the only non-chartbuster here, but a cool version of a cool song, that got the band noticed in the first place. The third band in the Pickin On... stable is The Sidekicks, who more or less replaced Cornbread Red on the roster, though they seem to be less like a real working band and more like a bunch of varying studio pros drafted in for the occasion. Be that as it may,  their take on Hanson's "Mmmbop", for example, does two things: make you understand the lyrics for the first time (try that on the spead up mickey mouse voiced original) and make you appreciate the song (although adult Hanson's acoustic readings of their song are very good as well). They also have a nice, drawl-y take on Blind Melon's "No Rain", their version of Imagine Dragons' "I Bet My Life" is clearly an improvement on the original (not that hard) and a cover of Hootie & The Blowfish's "Only Wanna Be With You". 

This is a fun, rollickin' time, offering often beautiful takes on some of the best known songs from the last half decade. You don't even need to be a particular big fan of bluegrass, armed with even a basic appreciation of acoustic or country-tinged music you'll probably find something to like here. Yeehaw, let the good times roll...

Mixtape Mania Returns! Bowie's Back! In A Ton Of Different Languages!

And the enunciations continue! Stop the press! Hot from the mixing desk! That's Right! Can't Stop Won't Stop!

O.k., enough of this nonsense. But yeah, holiday pastime Bowie mixing is back. It might not have seemed that way, because I spread out my little Bowie mixtapes/megamixes over a year and a half of One Buck Records time, but these were all done in summer 2023, along with the 2.Downtown continuation of the Nathan Adler diaries. And by the end of the summer, I was very well mixed out and Bowie'd out, so I bowed out of Bowie mixing endeavors for a good long while.  But while sorting through my music folders a month or so ago, I realized that at the time I had put a bunch of songs aside for two further mixes, including one with a thematic hook that I really wanted to do. 

And wouldn't you know it, it's the first week of holidays for me, so I could get to work right away, and Bowie mixtape no. 5, fresh from OBG's mixing desk, is here. And if the name of the mix, Babel, hasn't tipped you off yet - it's the first one with a clearly defined theme: Bowie has dabbled, for most of his career, in recording in different languages to cater to his fans worldwide. No one can accuse Bowie of not being a cunning linguist...   

Sometimes he cut a foreign language version because he loved the coutry or the language, as in his two Indonesian-language songs, and sometimes as a career move, such as trying to catch the attention of German schlager listeners in 1967 with a 'German version' (basically one German verse followed by most of the song in English) of "Love You 'Till Tuesday". The same idea is essentially true for the Italian adaptation of "Space Odyssey". Bowie was told that Italians wouldn't get the whole spaceship astronaut thing, so the song was turned into "Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola" - lonely boy, lonely girl. How do you say 'lost in translation' in Italian? 

Some of these tracks went nowhere, such as a barely released Spanish version of "Day-In, Day-Out", others were little gifts to fans, such as the Japanese version of "Girls" as Bowie's habitual bonus track for the Japanese album version of Never Let Me Down, or the French and German adaptations of "Heroes" on those countries' versions of the album of the same name. I also went back to his Berlin trilogy for the Turkish-flavored parts of "Yassassin" and the wordless vaguely Eastern-inspired wailing of"Warszawa", as well as the African rhythms of "African Night Flight" and a snatch of Japanese from "It's No Game". The atmosphere of "Abdulmajid" seemed to fit, so that instrumental track got mixed in as well. This is not supposed to be an 'all non-English music of Bowie, ever' thing, but pretty much everything of significance that isn't English should be here. 

Here's the tally of Bowie's Babel: 2x German, 2x Italian, 2x Indonesian, 1x Spanish, 1x French, 1x Mandarin, plus the above mentioned bits and bops, for the usual 30 minutes of Bowie. 

Bowie the chameleon is one of those easy catchphrases for the genre-hopping artist, but he is also - and definitely -  a chameleon in terms of dealing with these foreign languages. I obviously can't speak for how well he pulls off Indonesian, Japanse and Mandarin, but the Spanish sounds okay. He clearly doesn't speak German and manages with phonetics, while Italian seems to come naturally to him. His accent in French is pretty atrocious, though. But these versions are often more than pure gimmicks, and seem to have been important for Bowie, at one stage or another of his career. Now they can all be enjoyed in one easily digestable 30 minute package which I hope you will enjoy. In any language. 

Michael Johnson's First...And Finest...Feel The Breeze

You know what these All Pearls, No Swine albums are actually good for, besides providing you with a cool 70 minutes of quality music from decades past? Encountering artists you hadn't heard of before, as they did for me, obviously! So today's album is a follow-up to stumbling onto Michael Johnson's cover of Jackson Browne's "My Opening Farewell" on You Tube, then checking out more of Johnson from the same time period. As I opined in my write-up for All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 22, I think Johnson's confident take on the song is better than Browne's original, and it's one of the highlights of There Is A Breeze, our One Buck Record of the day. I hadn't heard of Michael Johnson before, though I'm sure some of y'all oldtimers remember him from an interesting, topsy-turvy career. 

Johnson's first brush with fame came in 1968 when he was drafted into The Mitchell Trio to replace last remaining original member Mike Kobluk, which led Chad Mitchell to disallow the use of his name, with the remaining trio thus becoming Denver, Boise & Johnson, releasing a lone single ("Take Me to Tomorrow") before splitting up. Johnson took some time to plan his next step, stepping away from trecording and touring to star in the off broadway musical Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well and Living In Paris (great title, by the way!).  He signed with Atco Records in 1971, but it took until 1973 for his debut album, the very One Buck Record of the day, to be released. It did only local business in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so Johnson labored on until The Michael Johnson Album in 1978 with its Top 20 hit "Bluer Than Blue" broke him into the mainstream, albeit as a pure soft rock artist, and those late 70s tracks have a decidedly mainstream adult contemporary, soft rock sheen to them that are less attractive to me personally than these early singer-songwriter songs. At least Johnson played his hand right, veering into contemporary country in the mid-80s and becoming a bona fide country star with two number one hits, though like his colleagues he began to rely on outside songwriters rather than his own compositions. So, let's go back to the beginning instead...

There Is A Breeze is a bit of an odd duck of an album for reasons I will get into, but the highlights of the album are as high as any of his singer-songwriter colleagues of the time. So let's talk quickly about my three favorites from the album (besides "My Opening Farewell"). "Pilot Me" is an true opening statement, in more than one sense. It's open to interpretation, whether the entity the protagonist pleads to to pilot him through the obstacles in his path is a lover, or, you know, god, but it doesn't matter. It's a beautiful, impassioned plea for help and guidance that works both ways. But if I had to pick, I'd say the organ and flugelhorn arrangement points me toward the divine instead of the profane. Either way, it's a beautiful, stately song. 

"On The Road" is a lovely, bouncy memoir to younger, carefree times. "We didn't know who we were, we didn't know what we did, we were just on the road". It's essentially a children's song, as is the song that follows it on thjs version of There Is A Breeze, which means they hit something deeper. You might have just heard it, but you instantly feel like you've known this song for forever. The joyous chikldren's choir is a fantastic flourish. If you don't want to join in the chorus while, listening to this, I don't know what to tell ya. "Rooty Tooty Toot For The Moon", the next track, is rhythmically a lullaby for adults, somewhat like James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James". The chorus might be a big ol' pile of nonsense, but you'll not forget it and will catch yourself singing along to it right away: "Singin' rooty toot toot for the moon / it's the biggest star I've ever seen / It's a pearl of wisdom, a slice of green cheese / Burning just like kerosene, burning just like kerosene". Like "On The Road", you feel you've known this song forever, almost instantly. Total instant classic. 

For a debut album by the traditional acoustic singer-songwriter there is a nice amount of variety here: "In Your Eyes", definitely more wordly than "Pilot Me", is a nice little gallop that is led by country blues-y playing from fellow folkie Leo Kottke on bottleneck guitar, while "I Got You Covered", driven by bass and congas, is kind of jazzy. The title song uses cello and harp to, respectively, and alternatively foreboding and uplifting effect in what is ultimately as gloomy a relationship song, as, say, Browne's "Latye For The Sky", while strings enhance the sad, elegiac "Old Folks", with its fatalistic reminder of "the old, old silver clock / that hangs on the wall / that waits for us all". There is of course a flipside to all these musical flourishes. With four different producers (including Peter Yarrow and Phil Ramone) laboring over the twelve songs, there is a bit of an 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach to proceedings, as if every producer wanted to highlight a different side of Johnson. He himself felt that the debut album wasn't a true reflection of his music and opted for a more traditional acoustic guitar sound for the follow-up. 

But here's the thing: The 'more is more' approach that is applied here makes for listening that never gets into a 'nice, but sounds a little samey' quagmire that the guitar-based singer-songwriter album can sometimes fall into. Say what you will about There Is A Breeze, but it isn't boring. Especially in this slimmed down, all killer no filler version courtesy of good ol' OBG. Well, at least some of these experiments were too much or didn't work, which is why I reconfigured the album, with the old 'addition by substraction' logic. There were two okay-ish horn-driven numbers (a musical direction Johnson tellingly wouldn't follow up on), which I felt was one too many, so I only kept "See You Soon". 

But "Happier Days", the first jettisoned track wasn't an almost fatal mistake, like "Study In E Minor", a glacially paced dirge on acoustic guitar that is exactly what the title says. Except it doesn't go anywhere it hasn't been in the very first seconds, and takes a long time to get there. That track always stopped my enjoyment of There Is A Breeze dead in its tracks and made me hurry to the skip button, so skip it we will. Forever. Also tellingly, that this acoustic guitar tracks is the one produced by Johnson, so he might've felt that this was a true representation of him and his folksy roots. I'd also say if Johnson had delivered an album full of tracks in the "Study In E Minor" mold, I wouldn't be singing his praises here today. Lord knows (and my readership, too, if you've been here for a bit) that I love cohesive albums, but There Is A Breeze wouldn't be the sucess it is without some of the production flourishes. 

Sequencing, however, was another issue, with the album losing momentum a number of times, so I tried to maintain a number of songs in their original spots while improving the flow elsewhere. While shuffling the tracks around for this version of There Is A Breeze, I felt it was important to keep "Pilot Me" as the opener and the framing device of the original sequencing. Side one ended, as it does here, with "Rooty Toot Toot For The Moon", while side two was ended with a very different kind of lullaby: "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught", from the Rogers-Hammerstein musical South Pacific. Its uneasy, provocative take on racism and hatred passed on from generation to generation end There Is A Breeze on a slightly controversial note, allowing the album a moment of political comment. But it also reminds us of the rousing lullaby about that green cheese pearl of wisdom star, and how the lullabies we sing and the stories we tell our children will shape their, and our, lives. 

Michael Johnson got bigger, and the spotlight got brighter, but it is an open question whether he ever bettered There Is A Breeze. It is at least one of the too little known entries in the singer-songwriter canon, that deserves better than its almost total anonymity these days. Get in the breeze, open your ears and see if you'll agree...