Not just another Queen album...it's just another Miracle...

One thing inevitably leads to another. That is true for some parts of your life, while others are completely random, but it's very true for this lil' music blog. When I investigated what Highlander material was officially issued by Queen when working on what became the Highlander bonus EP, I stumbled upon the The Miracle box set that Queen had issued last year. As some reviewers have remarked, The Miracle is a curious album to get the box set treatment: It's nobody's favorite Queen album, and it's nowhere near their best, either. It probably ends up in the back third, okay-ish but for fans section of their discography. 

But for every argument why this album didn't scream out for a box set treatment, there are arguments, why it exists. For one thing: wealth of material. Having burned through tours and albums at a frenetic pace throughout the early 80s (that's why the 'Live Aid as a panacea to a possibe separation' as well as the 'live rebirth' arcs were some of the many hard to swallow untruths of the ridiculous Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, there were less than two months between Queen wrapping up their The Works tour and Live Aid!) the group was completely knackered at the end of their Live Magic tour towards the end of 1986. For the first time in a long time, the band was going to take some time off. And instead of scrounging songs together because it was time to do another album, they would just reconvene when they had enough songs to feel well about beginning sessions for a new album. 

When they convened in early 1988, they had material, but they also had something else: knowledge of Freddie Mercury's health issues. While he didn't quite call his HIV-illness by its name, the band members understoodd the gravity of the situation. One indirect outcome was a novelty in Queen history: Instead of fighting for representation, royalties and 'getting their stuff in', all songs on the upcoming albums would be credited to all members of the group, no matter who wrote them. No more infighting over that shit, which had often led to the worst situations in the band, notably during the run-up to Hot Space (which was the real period where the band members were at each others' throats over everything). Anyway, with every member having been occupied with solo and side projects, when they got together for what was to become The Miracle, they were fully reloaded and cut -according to rumors - almost tirty songs, of which ten ended up on the album, and another five as bonus tracks or b-sides. Which means that there are still a dozen or so compositions from the era that were unaccounted for, but heavily bootlegged.   

With the box set, a bit of this material got an official release, together with a disc that runs through a number of early versions of the The Miracle songs, ranging from demos to first or unadultarated takes. These form the basis of today's One Buck Record of the day, ...Just Another Miracle. 

On the box set, these versions were presented as if you were hanging out in the studio with chatter, count in's, false starts, little doodles before and after the tracks etc. That's a fine way for fans to fully emerge themselves into the work of their heroes, but it's a terrible way to listen to this material as an actual album. So I got rid of all of that, making it sound as much like a real, finished album as possible. There were two vocal flubs, where Freddie Mercury either missed or messed up his vocals, so I edited these errors out. What you're left with is, I think, the most listenable version of the work-in-progress presentation of the Miracle songs. 

"Party" and "Kashoggi's Ship", the twin pieces opening The Miracle are here in their original version, rocking much harder and sounding less processed than the album versions. They were admittedly a slightly weird way to open an album, but I always liked these. Like the album as a whole, "Party" and Kashoggi's Ship" drown in electronics on the album, with especially the drums and keyboars sounding programmed to the gills. "The Miracle", a Freddie Mercury-John Deacon co-write is presented here as a demo with 'John's original ending'. To be fair, his jaunty synth coda at the end doesn't work at all, other than a curiosity, and it's no wonder they reworked that, but all that doesn't make it less interesting to hear. 

The original version of "I Want It All" is again much tougher sounding than the version they published. It originally started with some seconds of an impromptu jam/boogie section that didn't go anywhere, so I edited this to start of the song proper and edited arund Mercury originally fucking up his first lines. "The Invisible Man" is the demo version with most of the lead vocals done by writer Roger Taylor. Otherwise, the song is pretty much in place already, the punchy percussion and no key changes further giving away that this is Taylor's baby. 

I decided to add the song intro of the album's version of "Breakthru" to this original take, taken from an abandoned Mercury demo called "When Love Breaks Up", even if this version misses the line linking both bits. But well, the song just felt 'wrong' without it. Again, a minor edit to get rid of a Freddie comment in the song. The first part of the song sounds very familiar, but the second part is quite different. They hadn't yet worked out the breakdown around the two and a half minute mark, where Mercury's sharp "...now!" is missing. So it has a little bit of empty space in the middle, filled - as you would imagine -  with some Mercury ad libbing. Freddie is also clearly adlibbing and having fun towards the end of the song, proclaiming "You know something...if this song would stop right now, this would really be a breakthru, Brian. I mean, if I would drop dead, that would really be a breakthru, honey!".      

Not much to say about the demo version of the minor "Rain Must Fall", other than I edited out another Mercury vocal flub when he missed his cue. The song isn't much to write home about, and considering that they had much better material in the can, one wonders why this was included. The same is true for "My Baby Does Me" (here still entitled "My Baby Loves Me"), which I never had much use for. Sorry, John Deacon, but your two groove-based Miracle contributions are...not great. When listening to The Miracle my attention always waned towards the end of the album due to the stretch of "Rain", "Scandal" and "My Baby" which I always found a little boring. The victim of circumstances: The album closer "Was It All Worth It?", tucked away at the end after the album's least convincing song sequence. I had forgotten that this is a genuinely great Queen song, and definitely an underrated deep cut of theirs. 

"Was It All Worth It?" was, in light of Freddie's diagnosis, their first stab at 'a last Queen song' "What is there left for me to do in this life? Did I achieve what I set in my sights?" start Mercury's musings on his and his band's rock'n'roll career. It's also a god damn killer with some patented May riffage and high-powered rock'n'roll that revives both the original album and this alt from its three quarter slumber. 

These alternate versions don't make The Miracle miraculously a great album - the essence of the songs stays the same. But the rough mixes and original versions bring a toughness and more natural sound to a number of their songs, while the not-yet-finished bits in "The Miracle" or "Breakthru" are an interesting look at how they would figure out what worked about the songs - and what didn't. Still, a number of quality songs that could have made The Miracle a stronger album stayed in the shadows or entirely on the sidelines. But don't worry, the One Buck Guy is on the case. Be ready for another stab at The Miracle-era Queen in a couple of weeks with an all-new alternate album with stuff you haven't heard before! But, that is a story and listen for another day, while for now you can pass the time with ...Just Another Miracle. 

The Iceman has vanished into the sky

I, like many of my generations, met Val Kilmer as the cocky fighterpilot with a shit-eating grin in a movie full of cocky fighter pilots with shit-eating grins. No matter what else he played, Kilmer was always gonna be Iceman for folks roughly my age. 

Val Kilmer had the Montgomery Cllift dilemma. A self-professed serious actor blessed (or cursed) with movie star looks, he was cast in Blokbuster upon planned Blockbuster instead. Obviously he wasn't a real victim in this, because he gladly took the money and the fame. Had he really wanted to seek out indie roles in serious films, he probably could hav, especially after the Sundance/filmbrat revolution of the early to mid-90s. The one related film was Tony Scott's True Romance, a glossed up take on Tarantino in which Kilmer shows up for about three minutes tops as The Mentor, an imaginary Elvis figure giving advice to Christian Slater's lead character, and is never seen fully, only n reflections, half shadows, silhouette etc. A nice, self-effacing turn from a guy who wasn't about to efface himself, even if it was for serious roles. 

He did had a number of good roles in good to great films. He was really good playing a conflicted cop with Native American heritage in Thunderheart, Doc Holiday in Tombstone and one of De Niro's gangster crew members in Michael Mann's Heat. Those were probably the best years of Kilmer, but he had late career highlights in the modestly distributed and thus little-seen The Salton Sea and an extremely fun turn opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 

A throat cancer diagnosed in 2015 and its subsequent treatments damaged his voca chords irreparably and robbed him of his voice. Kilmer spent the following years asssembling memoirs, the book I'm Your Huckleberry and the autobiographic documentary Val. Fittingly, though, the last memory of him that most of us have, was in a reprisal of his first key role. Top Gun: Maverick was easily one of the best of the lecacyquels that became popular around the time, and Tom Cruise insisted that Kilmer have a short appearance in it. 

It was time to let go. Thank you, Ice, for everything.   

R.I.P. Val Kilmer, 1959 - 2025

Today's download is a little mixtape I made right after seeing Top Gun: Maverick, mixing the film's signature songs with the unreleased score from Hans Zimmer and some dialogue. Top Gun's music, 80s cheese, and all, will always be my wingman. And it can be yours, too...

Into the unknown of garage rock: The legend of The Firefighters

Lawrence Gaylord ("LG") Snyder was born in 1950, grandson of James L. Snyder of the Snyder Railroad Company out of New England. Coming from a rather well-off family young LG got, according to his own recollection, infected by the explosion of amazing new rock sounds, and especially the garage rock of the mid-60s, hat showed him that talent could be secondary to enthusiam when playing rock'n'roll music. Trained on piano by his mother, he switched to guitar, despite the misgivings of his family about such a 'vulgar' instrument. He started writing his own songs at around 15, then recruited his first band among his class mates: Canadian import Eric St. Laurent on lead guitar, Tommy Zordi on bass and Zack Domino on drums. 

They were first known as The Nihilists, a name quickly abandoned, then as the Back Stars, before becoming The Firemen, and then The Firefighters. Snyder had a different name planned for the last iteration of the band, but more on that later. Throughout the last two years of high school the band played the usual hig school balls, homecoming and the occasional house party, their repertoir mostly consisting of sped up, guitar-heavy version -s of the hits of the day, plus an original song or two. After finishing high school - something his rather conservative family insisted on - he decided to try for a career in music instead of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a doctor. 

One of two surviving pictures of The Firefighters

The band had built a primitive rehearsal room in the back half of his family's guest house and were allowed to perform their "awful noise" (LG's father Lawrence Sr.). The band managed to get a publishing contract with local mini label Roof Music, and some studio time to work on material. Musically, there was just one problem: Though an extroverted and entertaining front man, LG Snyder wasn't much of a singer. But since he was footing the bill thanks to his trust fund, his band mates had little choice but to put up with sometimes less than entirely successful vocal performances by their leader. In the DIY spirit of the garage rock movement it's probably fair to say, that they had a point. 

In February 1968 the band cut a tape of eight songs, three originals and five covers, including covers of the recent hits "Nights In White Satin" and "A Whiter Shade Of Pale". Roof Music, however, had by this time started to leave garage bands behind to focus on psychedelic acts, and despite some overtures of the band in that direction, PeteYork at Roof Music didn't feel that The Firefighters' music had a chance of success. So a proposed single with their cover of "Hey Joe", backed by the original "Room To Room With The devil" was scrapped. This, as it turned out, was the beginning of the end for the band. 

Zack Domino got his draft notice, then subsequently went to Canada to dodge the draft. At around the same time, St. Laurent returned to Quebec to work in his family's furniture store. With the band down to just Zordi and Snyder, Zordi decided to work fulltime at the family restaurant, and Snyder was left without a band. Dejectedly, he finally followed into the family-endorsed career plan and enrolled at Boston  University to become a doctor. Even after moving to Texas later in his life, "Doc" Snyder always preciously kept the reel-to-reel tape of The Firefighters' demo tape, mostly in a well-tempered garage. It was upon his death in 2018 from a heart attack that his kids found the tape and were amazed what their father had been up to so many years before. In trying to transfer the reels to digital, local music lover Sergei Gleithman was astonished by the results when proposing the transfer in his music shop and called Toby "Rocko" Shamani of Boston-based independent label Jamaica Plain Records. Shamani, a fan of original ska and garage rock decided to issue the record and so in 2019 the mini-album We Are The Firefighters finally saw the light of day, more than sixty years after its recording.

Still in the same space...and sadly no firefighter costumes (they were still The Back Stars at the time, I believe...)

Bratislav Metulskie from garagedoor.ru opines: "These guys were a hidden treasure. Behind the rather extravagant vocal sylings of lead singer LG Snyder, the band could produce a racket of noise when they wanted to, but where also able to rein things in, especially on their surprisingly subtle take on traditional 'I'm Going Back To Old Texas Now'. The finding and remastering of these tapes long lost to time and memory is a major cause for celebration and any garage rock and pysychedelic rock fan should celebrate this release, especially since the sound quality is simply astounding for recordings that are now over 55 years old. Major thumbs up!". Robert Overbarger from Allmusic adds that "while the recordings, much like the band itself, are only a minor addition to the garage band canon, the finding of these tapes is a major event". 

Like most garage bands, The Firefighters mainly traded in covering popular genre songs, including - inevitably - "Hey Joe", a band that seemingly every garage band had in their repertoire (though they miss out on "Hang On Sloopy"!). They also cover The Who's "My Generation" as the opening track here, while "Nights In White Satin" is a pretty straightforward cover. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" gets a swinging, jazz-inspired arragement, set to what sounds almost like a polk rhythm, and including a trumpet solo. Maybe they weren't geniuses, but The Firefighters definitely tried some stuff! This is also true for their slowed down take on "I'm Going To Leave Old Texas Now". 

Snyder in 2016, guitar still in hand...

Of the originals, "Room To Room With The Devil" is pretty much early hard rock, as is "Beside The Snake", which adds some nifty psychedelic touches. And then there's the band's 'theme' song, picking up the band's original, more vulgar name. It took some convincing from Pete York at Roof Music that The Firefuckers as a band name would mean that there was no way to officially distribute their recordings, so Snyder renamed the band and also rewrote their band anthem "We are the Firefuckers" to "We are the Firefighters". For this re-issue, the original, untouched version of the song - also discovered on the tape - has been used. 

So, folks, are you ready for some Firefighters to cause a ruckus and bring you back into the heady days of the late 60s? Then let LG Snyder and his parthers in crime noise take it away...

We've Got You Covered, Ziggy...uh, I mean...David

In the beginning, the We've Got You Covered series existed solely as a vehicle for Gene Clark covers. Then I opened up the series to Little Feat (with a little help of some friendly neighbourhood bloggers), and recently I figured that we definitely need some new blood in the series. And who has not only a huge back catalogue of great songs, but also songs in a variety of styles and songs that could invite artists that cover them to try and do something interesting with them? That's right, it's Ziggy The Thin White Duke Mr. David Jones. Bowie, whether you like him or not,  had one of the most adventurous discographies out there, and the possibilities for over artists are varied. Sure, you can fill whole albums alone with the most popular picks like "Life On Mars?" and "Space Oddity", but obviously in these and the following editions of We've Got You Covered: David Bowie we also hope to dig into some lesser known songs of the Bowie back catalogue. 

Some of the versions in this series are from dedicated tribute samplers, others from b-sides, various artist comps, album deep cuts or live in studio performances. Ian McCullough's and Sharleeen Spiteri's take on "Changes" is exclusive to this comp, as is the "Intro" track by the David Bowie Tour Band (featuring Gail Ann Dorsey who will pop up in later editions). which was the intro to their tribute to Bowie at the Brit Awards in 2016. 

Gail Ann and her perfect haircut

It's interesting how many new wave and new romantics acts declared allegiance with Bowie, possibly as a direct reaction to punk's rejection of him. The often maligned Culture Club deliver a fantastic, moody version of "Starman", while Duran Duran consider the ramifications of "Fame". Frankie Goes To Hollywodd take a trip to "Sufragette City" and Tears For Fears - even if it's the early-90s, Roland Orzabal-only version of the band - chime in with a really nice version of "Ashes To Ashes". 

Sure, there's some traditional-sounding covers here, not least from Bowie's backing band, the Spiders From Mars, but of course the more adventurous versions are what really make these series interesting. The Moonshiners' reggae take on "Modern Love" certainly qualifies, as does the theatrical take on "Life On Mars?" courtesy of the unlikely combination between The Divine Comedy and France's Yann Thiersen. There is also Beck's idiosyncratic re-imagining of "Sound And Vision" (presented here in a special edit) and Iva Davies & Icehouse's absolutely magnificent, slowed-down version of "Heroes", conceived for a ballet performance. Like Tears For Fears, Icehouse in the mid-90s were at that time basically only frontman Iva Davies, plus whichever sidemen he would work with, but they had a special knack for Bowie covers, as we will see a little bit later on.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Davies....perfect haircuts 2

And then, at the end, we let the weirdness take over completely: First there's American wild card group The Gourds (already familiar to long-standing One Buck Heads for their unique take on Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice"), whose take on "Ziggy stardust" can best be described as, uh, Calypso Bluegrass?! And then we end things with those bona fide weirdos The Flaming Lips and their cosmic take on "Space Oddity". Oddities, indeed. 

To start things off I did include the heavy hitters of Bowie's backlog in this first volume, but future editions will include some lesser known numbers. In the meantime, there's lots of fun to dig into. So dig! 

He was more than just walking in Memphis...let's rediscover Marc Cohn

Marc Cohn is mostly remembered, if at all, as a one-hit wonder. Chances are, if you just give the name to a random passerby (of a certain age) even the name won't ring a bell, but if you sing a couple of lines of his one big hit, some might remember. It also feels terribly unfair to call Cohn a one-hit-wonder considering the uality of his work, but that's because we often associate one hit wonders with novelty songs and bubblegum hits. Some of the most lauded artists and bands are technically no hit wonders, so being a one hit wonder is at least something. And to those who bemoan that their idol had a fluke hit despite his much better work being unknown - Warren Zevon fans customers come to mind - I'll say, it's better to be a one hit wonder than a no-hit wonder. And Cohn's one hit is, unlike some of his less reputable brethren, a really good song, too, with an irresistible melody and some memorable imagery. Speaking of Warren Zevon fans: One of them, discussing music on their bulletin board, denigrated Cohn, comparing him to Jon Bon Jovi for being an obvious songwriter. A song that unites the ghost of Elvis, W.C. Handy and Muriel who plays piano, every friday at the Hollywood, would like to have a word with you, dude. 

Here's the thing about some of Cohn's song, which might've spurred such unnecesssary as well as wildly off denigration: He uses stock imagery of the literary songwriter: angels, wind, rain, and such. So what? They can not all be Dylan. Jackon Browne, one of the best songwriters of his generation, often traded in stock imagery, but the way he expressed himself and the way he made his melancholy music sound smoothed over whatever accusations of a too obvious imagery there might be. And Cohn at his best was full of mature, intelligent observation. Take "The Things We've Handed Down", in my book one of the best songs about parents and children ever written. It has its moments of kitsch and cheese via the dreaded angel imagery: "Don't know why you chose us / were you watching from above", but also lines like this: "You may not always be grateful for the way that you were made / Some feature of your father's that you'd gladly sell or trade / And one day you may look at us and say that you were cursed / but over time that line has been extremely well-rehearsed / by our fathers and their fathers in some old and distant town / from places no one here remembers come the things we've handed down." Jon Bon Jovi couldn't write this, even on his very best day.   

When Cohn hit it big with "Walking in Memphis" in 1991 he seemed to come out of nowhere, like a lot of one hit wonders - but he was a veteran by then, working the coffee houses and piano bars for years, founding the 14-piece cover/show band The Supreme Court that made a good living playing weddings and such, recorded a one-off pop single in the mid-80s (produced by an Alessi brother, but it wasn't even his own song!) before working on Tracy Chapman's "Crossroads" album got him a foot in the door and someone at Atlantic Records finally listened to his demo tape.

I was working on a compilation highlighting Marc Cohn, but really expedited my work when, in the last weeks, spurred on by the fabulous themed collections over at Jokonky's I continued to suggest Marc Cohn songs in threads about painters and cars (and I'm happy to see he made the Fantasy Americn Explorer Series! Yay Jonder! Yay Koen! Yay Cohn!). Cohn did write one of the most moving portrayals of an artist with "Olana", the song that gave my daughter her name, but is really about the place famous American painter Frederick Church built when he lost use of his hands due to rheumatism. There's so many things I like about this song that I could spend paragraphs on it: the sudden realization midway through the song that the narrator's voice comes from beyond the grave or the beautiful counter melodies in the chorus, sung by Rosanne Cash, whose husband John Leventhal produced most of Cohn's work. 

And there's "Silver Thunderbird", that - like Springsteen's car songs - is about more than vehicles, also giving a portrait, real or imagined, of his father. "Great big fins and painted steel, man it looked just like the Batnobile, with my old man behind the wheel. You could hardly even see him in all of that chrome, the man with the plan and the pocket comb", and in just a few words he has characterized the man who imparts some wisdom on his kid: "Don't gimme no Buick, son you must take my word: if there's a God up in heaven, he's got a silver Thunderbird." Again, get the fuck outta here with that Jon Bon Jovi bullshit. 

So, before this really gets too long, as I could talk a ton more about the man and his music and what it means to me, but I'll let you get to the music soon, I swear. Work To Do - The Music Of Marc Cohn is a personal 'best of', reflecting my personal interests and likes in his music. That means that I don't have some of his attempts at a sort of soul light, as these often felt too much sliding into the adult contemporary corner that some of his music no doubt is at least adjacent to. The lion's share of the tracklist is sourced from his superior debut album Marc Cohn. It pays to be a fifteen year veteran who has honed his songwriting, so Marc Cohn came out fully formed. But, as the apocryphal saying goes, 'You have your whole life to prepare your debut album, and then six months for the follow-iup'. Which is no doubt true, but also led to a real sophomore slump with The Rainy Season two years later. Still, even a generally disappointing album yielded some fine track, including the above mentioned "The Things We've Handed Down" and the very Jackson Brwone-sounding "From A Station" (featuring backing vocals by Crosby & Nash). The album that really put me back in his music was 1998's Burning The Daze, but 2007's Join The Parade, which I only caught up with belatedly, didn't catch my attention as much, despite getting some of the best reviews of his career. And then he took another long hiatus until 2020's Work To Do, an album with The Blind Boys of Alabama that combines three studio recordings with a live concert performance. 

The title song of that album that also gives this comp its name is a bit of a mission statement: There is still work to do, for Mr. Cohn, despite some unexpected bouts of hardship. While on tour with Suzanne Vega an attempted carjacking on a tour stop in Denver ended with the carjacker putting a bullet in his head. Literally. Cohn commented that doctors told him that he was the luckiest unlucky guy they had seen in quite a while. But he stays a bit of an unlucky guy, having been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2020. No new music has been coming since then, but I was happy to see that he has a number of concerts lined up for 2025. So there is still work to do. If he comes into your neck of the woods, go and see him, he is a funny and inviting presence in concert. And of course, listen to Work To Do - The Music Of Marc Cohn, which gives you a fine overview of the often overlooked work of this underrated singer-songwriter.   

McGuinn, Clark & Hillman Go Down Under!

 ...and here's the goodie to wrap up - for now - the adventures of MCH. The One Buck record of the day chronicles the group's tour of Australia and New Zealand in the fall of 1978, right after signing with Capitol and just before going into the studio to record their debut album. The timing is important here: For one thing, this was the first time that these three had played together in years, and also the first time that they had played the old Byrds classic with a full band in a while. And they were just starting into the adventure, which means despite some misgivings and suspicions towards the other band members, everyone was still in relatively high spirits. There is a cameraderie and yes, even joy, in these performances that simply isn't there in the concerts of 1979, where they are augmented by a bunch of professional pickers and every concert feels like work rather than a fun experience. 

Clearly, here they are still excited to play what were at the time brand new songs, while about a year later they had to trot out songs like "Don't You Write Her Off" or "Backstage Pass" out of need rather than a wish to play them. And then there's the secret weapon they brought diwn under with them: the drummer! George Grantham, formerly of Poco. Grantham is highly underrated, especially if his work here is any measure. He provides high harmonies not seen in the Byrds or a Byrds-adjacent band since Crosby and his drumming style has a swing and groove to it that regular tour drummer Scott Killpatrick was never able to duplicate. "Feelin' Higher" especially builds up a mean groove that they wouldn't capture again (that's why it also ended up replacing the more placid acoustic version on Two Worlds). 

The lion's shere here (tracks 1-12) is from a concert in Sydney, which reveals that - since they hadn't developed the album songs yet - they mostly relied on the songs Clark & McGuinn had been touring with acoustically throughout 1978, including the two originals mentioned above and "Release Me Girl", which would all turn up on the album. The rest was a smattering of Byrds classic, plus Hillman (who dind't have a lead vocal showcase otherwise) dipping back into his Manassas days for "It Doesn't Matter". Of the Byrds classics, "Mr. Tambourine Man" was a particular higlight, including more verses than the original hit single and having the three band members take turns on lead vocals. One oddity of this recording is that smack dab in the middle there's a Clark solo acoustic version of "Silver Raven". Why? Beats me. Did McGuinn and Clark feel like having a smoke and said 'Geno, you got this'? Who knows! You'll also notice that the beginning of "He Was A Friend Of Mine" is missing, again no idea why, but I figure a tape cut of some sort. It is what it is. 

Since the set list and performances were pretty much the same across concerts and Sydney had the best sound, I avoided duplicates, so afterwards we over on to Melbourne a couple of days later for an acoustic session, including some great crowd interaction in "You Ain't Going Nowhere", an energetic bluegrass take on "Pretty Booy Floyd" and a great version on Clark's "Train Leaves Here This Morning". The latter track is the only one for which I'm not sure of date or origin or whether it's even from their tour down under, but it sure sounds like it could be and fits well in here.   

And then, for the finale we take a dip to New Zealand for two songs: First there's old Byrds warhorse "Ballad Of Easy Rider" and then we end things in style with a true rarity, their a capella take on Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Find The Cost Of Freedom".  

So, this is a great reminder that for all the stiltedness and slickness of their records, McGuinn, Clark & Hillman could really deliver when on the road and in the right mood, something that our friends and neighbours in Australasia could largely profit from in late 1978. And which you can profit from right now! So, fly with these ex-Byds halfway across the globe and get a groove on...Down Under.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something...Byrdsian?!

Alright alright, I know what you'll say, especially if you are a confirmed One Buck head, is ol' OBG doing some recycling again? Didn't we already have a bunch of McGuinn, Clark & Hillman on these pages? Yes, we did! But for some reason about thirty or so new-ish One Buck Heads wandered into, of all things, the thread on the misshapen third capter of MCH, McGuinn & Hillman's self-titled album (and again, no one asked for a link...?!). Weird, unless they are all Russian spy bots or something. So I figured I'll post the last MCH goodie on tap this weekend, but since some of you might not have the alt albums from the trio I'll repost these first and then get to the new content tomorrow.

But, if you've read the title, you'll see that I do promise something new in the title, because there is some! This week I relistened to Two Worlds, the re-imagined first MCH album, and what can I say, I was mildly miffed, thinking I didn't do a great job on that first album side. That first side, the 'country' side never seemed to get out of first gear. As much as I love "Crazy Ladies", it maybe wasn't the best choice for an album opener. And the version of "Feelin' Higher" just felt really slow, which wouldn't have been a huge problem, if "Release Me Girl" also wasn't quite slow. That's the problem of building an alt album around live Clark recordings. Geno would notoriously slow down his midtempo compositions, so that they'll inevitably end up with a dirge-like tempo.   

Drunk or stoned or all of the above? Hint: it's all of the above...

When I laid out the idea of Two Worlds I was torn between using a much livelier, but electric live track for "Feelin' Higher" and the acoustic duo version that I finally stuck with, thinking that would be more coherent for the rural or 'country' side. But that was a mistake, pure and simple, the slowed down numbers together with the "Surrender To Me" demo and "Crazy Ladies" basically had four slow-ish numbers one after the other, turning the beginning of the album into a sluggish affair. So, back to the drawing board for OBG - I reworked and resequenced the entire first side. The live version is in, with the added latin percussion coda a much better fit than the slightly akward transition on the aoustic track. Then, the first five tracks are all resequenced for a better flow. And finally, I thought that the transition at the beginning of the reprise of "Feelin' Higher" at the end of the album didn't sound quite right, either, so I remixed that as well..

All that is to say: If you like the general idea or the first version of Two Worlds, then you should still get this to upgrade, because the version included here is an improvement to my ears. Also included are the same-as-before re-imagined second album City and the expanded McGuinn & Hillman album. (You can check out more info on all three albums in the respective write-ups, should you feel so inclined)

And be sure to check in tomorrow for another MCH goodie...

State of the Onion: Modern Rock Radio

Fellow music listeners,

I adress you today fully aware that most of you probably don't listen to modern rock radio, and neither do I. Several turns in the wife's Musk Mobile yesterday, in which there is nothing but radio led me to turn on the solitary rock station, and somehow I got stuck on it during my several trips during the day. So, how is modern rock radio doing these days you ask? Oh well. 

Let me say it like this: If one of the best tracks I heard yesterday on the rock station is "Hedonism (Just because It Makes you Feel Good)" from Skunk Anansie, there's trouble. That song is 25 years old. Still a great number, that nothing from the modern rotation could hold a candle to. What really struck me is how uniform everything sounded. Every single number had an electronic sheen and almost all of them soundd like they were made for a stadium crowd, with several having specific singalong sections that couldn't be any more obvious if they tried. 

OBG discussing modern rock music (artist illlustration)

Now I expect that shit from Coldplay, who were good for their first two albums - look at my list from 2002...they beat out Johnny Cash!. Seriously, before its singles got played to death and everybody got sick of them A Rush Of Blood To The Head was a great album. But from 2005's X&Y forward, the pandering stadium rock agenda was on. From what I can gather, they had a brief return to form with Viva La Vida, but since then it's been who-who-who choruses and the most obvious chords and melodies imaginable. This mirrors the way Kings Of Leon, one of my favorite bands from the Aughts turned, who around the same time as Coldplay decided to vy for the title of "most obvious U 2-imitating stadium rock band", while the original U 2 were still there fighting for that very same title! A quick return to form (2010's Come Around Sundown) and a slow descend into faceless midtempo singalong stadium pap hell. 

So, Coldplay's "Paradise" which has a literal handclapping section, so the crowd knows when to stop texting and livestreaming in the middle of the concert and throw their hands together - better be safe than sorry - wan't exactly paradise, but more of the same shit the band has been churning out for about twenty years. But The Offspring, third generation punk rock and ska doofuses, who still had a number of fun numbers when I was young ("Come Out And Play" and the inescapable "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)")? Same stadium rock sheen. The lyrics for "Ok, But This Is The Last Time" vaguely and no doubt purposely recall their breakthrough hit "Self Esteem" but there is no crunch to the guitars or drum, everything sounds like it has been processed to death. 

Ok, I admit, the animated imagined murder scenes are pretty nifty...

And don't even get me started on Alanis Morisette. We have come a long way from rock's golden age when I have to take Alanis freakin' Morisette as a gatekeeper for rock'n'roll, but man, when I heard "Reasons I Drink" with its big "Who-ho-ho" singalong chorus...it's like The Thing out here, baby, everyone has been assimilated to resemble the same thing. Mumford & Sons' "Rushmere"? Pure stadium 'rock' crap, basically the same as ever since Wilder Minds. When the band said "Fuck the banjo", I said "Fuck the Mumfords"and nothing I've heard from them since has made me want to change my mind again. 

Which brings me to at least one survivor from the rock'n'roll days of my youth with something useful to contribute. Placebo's "Try Better Next Time" is already three years old, but there was a real rush of nostalgia to hearing their classic sound again. Placebo still sound like Placebo, and amazingly Brian Molko has developed a sense of humor: "At the core of the earth / it's too hot to breathe / There's not much to eat / and everybody leaves". And then last night, while everyone had already peepled out of the car I stayed behind for three minutes (with the wife coming up at around the two minute mark, wondering what I was still doing in the car) to listen to Tracy Chapman's "Bang Bang Bang" from 1992. Today's rock music mostly sucks, but hey, at the end of the day, people still find a reason to believe. Someone said that in a song somewhere I believe. Because there's always a song to remember and a song to tide us over. 

So, is there a point to all this rambling? No, probably not. Which makes me probably a lot like a certain president during his state of the union onion union adress. But well, that's what can happen on a music blog, sometimes it's just a dude rambling about music... 

 So, be well, fellow listeners, 

and to those about to rock, we salute you!

Good night. And good luck. 

P.S.: No special music foreseen for this, but I figure if you made it through these ramblings you deserve something, so find a rocking, Jonder-approved surprise in the download...

From The Record Shelf: Let some Chicks take you Home...

Well, that escalated quickly. Or, you know, it didn't. When I posted the Dixie Chicks' Fly back in *checks notes* May 2024 (?!?), the idea was to in the following weeks and months to their next two albums as the trio of albums the Chicks started with Fly are all great. Yeah, you read that right, weeks and months. Not, you know, years apart. But as usual, I started to post a bunch of other cool stuff and then kind of forgot about the Chicks. But no more! Maybe because Easter is coming up? Nope, that's not it, though. What really brought me back Home is the recent post about Ron Sexsmith's fabulous Cobblestone Runway album. Thinking its slight electronic embellishment sheen made me think of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Beck's Sea Change, and wouldn't you know it, they all came out the same year. You know which great album also came out in 2002? That's right, the Dixie Chicks' Home which has some claim to be the Chicks' best album. 

About twenty years ago I was hanging out on the Warren Zevon Bulletin Board, and regularly getting into fights - internet fights, thus the stupidest fights imaginable - with that one guy. I've forgotten his name, but I distincly remember him commenting when someone posted a music magazines - probably Rolling Stone - Top 250 albums of, uh, the laf-decade maybe? "If they are so obtuse as to not list Home, their list is coompletely worthless" opined that dude, and while his name might be lost to the fog of memory, his very personal and insistent use of the word obtuse. So, WZBB internet rando from around 2005 - you were wrong about pretty much everything else, but you were right about Home being a great album! 

Home saw the Chicks leaning further into the things that worked so well on Fly. That album introduced some Celtic influences, so Home has an entire jig (or reel?) called "Lil' Jack Slade" that is, uh, Irish bluegrass (?!?) and bring out the uillean pipes and tin whistle for "More Love". Bluegrass is actually a pretty constant presence on the album, and listening back to it it's pretty amazing how bluegrass Home  really is - for a projected megaseller. There's two reasons for this: One is that the Dixie Chicks' confidence level was through the roof, the other was the unprecedented success of the old-timey sounds of the O Brother Where Art Though? soundtrack in between Fly and this album. 

The Chicks still don't trust themselves completely as songwriters, though we have three band songs here, up from one of Wide Open Spaces and but they picked top notch songs from top notch writers, including two from Patty Griffin, Stevie Nicks' old Fleetwood Mac warhorse "Landslide"the beautiful "A Home" by Maia & randy Sharp, a great storytelling song from Bruce Robison ("Travelin' Soldier"), the rollicking opening number "Long Time Gone" penned by Darrel Scott, which has a couple of great lines, poking modern country radio: "They sound tired, but they don't sound Haggard, they got money, but they don't have Cash, they got Junior, but they don't have Hank".   

Of course, country radio would soon poke back, and hard. Natalie Maines' critical comments about George W. Bush and the Iraq warmongering of his administration(boy, were we innocent babes in the woods when we thought that guy was the worst president ever and you couldn't stoop lower than that doof...welp...) saw country radio drop the Chicks like a bad habit, making fourth single "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)" their lowest charting single ever and have "Sitting On Top Of The World", one of the two Griffith numbers, miss the charts entirely. The Chicks and country radio would never be close again.  

History would of course be on the Chicks' side, and on Home's which remains a classic. So, let these chicks take you home for some very fine bluegrass-flavored country music...

And just for funzies, here's my top ten albums from 2002:

1. Patty Griffin – 1,000 Kisses

2. Dixie Chicks – Home

3. Ron Sexsmith – Cobblestone Runway

4. Beck – Sea Change

5. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

6. Counting Crows – Hard Candy

7. Dan Brodie – Empty Arms, Broken Hearts

8. Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band – The Rising

9. Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head

10. Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around

You Kansas boys, the de-progging will continue until morale improves!

Time for round two of our popular (?!?) deprogging program, letting good ol' Kansas go of their prog pretenions a little earlier than they did for real. If you have checked the de-progged verion of Leftoverture and its accompanying write-up, then you know that I feel that Kansas always was a bit of wolf in sheep's clothing, finally bursting out of their woolly disguise to be the AOR/mainstream rock band they always wanted to be at the turn of the decade. You'll also know that I find their prog ambitions to often be misguided, especially with their often dreadfully timed and obviously only-there-for-credit instrumental solos. So, round two does the same thing that round one did: A grating solo? An ill-advised prog section? Gone and gone! Admittedly, they were already on their way to more conventional pop songs, generally going for shorter songs than previously, yet still with some grafted on prog sections that in this version have gone the way of the dodo. 

All in all, five of the tracks have been edited: "Paradox", "The Spider" (which admittedly only leaves a snatch of this already short song), "Closet Chronicle", "Nobody's Home" and "Helplessly Hoping". As with Leftoverture, what's left is more of an art pop album than the Yes imitation these good ol' boys from Topeka were trying to be. To be fair, Point of Know Return doesn't only have the acoustic guitar by the campfire classic "Dust In The Wind" that ultimately turned off a lot of their old prog fans from the band for 'selling out'. It also had what is maybe not their best song from their prog era - that one might still be "Carry On Wayward Son" - but the one song that showed how they could best align their pop and their prog instincts. The title song is somewhat of an ideal Kansas song: it has a great big pop hook, some thankfully short prog sections, the usual tempo changes etc., but finally does all of this and gets out in less than three and a half minutes! Well played, Kansas! If only you had been so disciplined more often!

There are still enough traces of prog if you're a fan, and definitely more than a shot of rock'n'roll, things that then started to drift into more of an AOR sound on follow-up Monolith. So, this is the last - and possibly best - of the classic Kansas era, in a leaner, meaner version. So, get ready for some heartland proggers slightly de-progged...but still laying some kick ass music...

Get your Rowans in a row...and let that sweet 70s music flow...

Sometimes a well-meant compliment can be more poisonous than a barely disguised insult. Jerry Garcia meant well when he compared Chris and Lorin, two of the three Rowan Brothers, to The Beatles, but well...comparing these two young guys to the most popular and in many ways most inventive group in pop music history...thanks, Jerr. So, the Rowans' debut started with probably too high expectations, with debut The Rowan Brothers' amiable country/folk rock not being up to the standards of the Beatles, or even the best of the genre. It has its moments, including the sprightly "Hickory Day" and the chugging, heavy "Thunder On The Mountain", though having a minute long intro of Tibetan horns was, while certainly an artistic choice, also an acquired taste. So was the idea of having the track run seven minute long, that's why I created a single edit, despite the song never having been released as a single. 

When big brother Peter joined The Rowan Brothers and they became The Rowans, he was easily the most established entity, having worked in Earth Opera, with Seatrain and Muleskinner and then of course bluegrass supergroup Old & In The Way, which - while shortlived - was highly influential in turning young college crowds on to bluegrass music. Peter was always more country than his brothers, so he brought that influence to the band. But he was always more Jimmie Rodgers than Gram Parsons, so his idea of country was really old school, often story songs with historical figures. And, like Jimmie, he wasn't above the occasional yodel. He also brought two of his best known Old & In The Way numbers with him, doing a lovely update of "Midnight - Moonlight" for The Rowans and playing "Land Of The Navajo" in concert.

The first album as a trio, simply entitled The Rowans (1975) is probably their most balanced and coherent effort. Sibling Rivalry (1976) has a number of their best songs like "Soldiers Of The Cross". But it also shows the Rowans going into a number of directions at once, not always succcessfully or coherently. And Jubilation from a year later sees them fully in the thrall of the production trends of the time, seeing disco orchestration and soft rock work hand in hand for an album that is not very satisfying. Which brings us directly to the raison d'être for today's One Buck Record.   

The Rowans are the kind of group where a well-chosen compilation is probably all you need from them. As described above, all of them have a moment here and there - their first two moreso than the last two - but none of them hold together particularly well. Thus, the Brothers' Keepers, because these twenty tracks are really that and you don't need much, if anything more, from Lorin, Chris and Peter. I added a couple of live tracks from a 1976 Winterland concert that give a slightly tougher edge to a Jubilation track like "Calle Music", has the aforementioned "Land Of The Navajo" and "I Do Believe" which I do bellieve is an otherwise unavailable track they never recorded in the studio. 

So, everyone ready for some sweet sweet Seventies music, Calle or otherwise? Thought so, then let's roll...

 

 

Aerosmith G.T.F.O. - Again...

Let's do it like they do in Hollywood: That's right, folks, it's sequel time! Not necessarily because the first album was such a huge hit on this here ol' blog, but because I had too many songs to fit onto one album. If you recall, I dropped some songs from the line up of that first album 'cause it just ran too long, a problem with bands who have a well-defined but relatively similar sound (ZZ Top comes to mind as a prime example). So there was always gonna be a G.T.F.O. 2, and well, here it is. The concept hasn't changed: The Geffen years, told via deep and live cuts, remixes, outtakes, non-album singles and soundtrack contributions.  

Like any good sequel it opens with something immediately reminding the audience of that first thing. In this case, it has the same opening track, mainly because it's a great, rousing opener. This time, "Livin' On The Edge" is featured in a live version. Some things on here are fittingly literal second parts: The country & western ballad "Once Is Enough" already featured on Country Dreamers and the first G.T.F.O. album, but the second part hasn't featured yet, mainly because it's a rather stereotypical Aerosmith rave-up. And "Burnin Up (Again)" is the second part (or rather, the last quarter) of the smokin' (yup, pun intended) Pump outtake on the first album. But it just ran too long, severely impacting the flow of the collection. So you get the rest - including some nice fretting on slide guitar - right here. 

There is the usual assortment of remixes (for "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" and "Love In An Elevator") and alternate version (acoustic versions of  "Amazing" and "Angel" and "Monkey On My Back" from MTV Unplugged before that show blew up).There's Doors cover "Love Me Two Times" from the Air America soundtrack and for collectors the rare and really nice, mellow instrumental outtake "Fake Fight" and a mix of outtake snatches. There really is a bit of everything on here. Sure, if you can't get on board with the more mainstream side of Aerosmith during the Geffen years, some of these remixes might fall on the wrong side of pandering, but frankly, I think everything on here kicks butt, so, yeah...

So, choices, choices. Get on board with G.T.F.O. 2 or g.t.f.o.! (Just kidding of course) 

And now for something completely different: Old school hip hop extravaganza!

Other than a trip into hick hop last year hip hop hasn't featured here much, mainly because it doesn't feature very much in my musical life anymore. Me'n'hip hop go back a while and it's music that I mostly left behind, settling for sudden bouts of craving some "bomb beat from Dre" or other from time, mostly when I'm driving. A recent listen on a drive to work to en early version of this comp made me push to finish it and the accompanying write-up. 

Ah, it has been a good long while that this write-up has been kicking around as the beginning of a doc, but I never got around to finishing it, mostly because I wrote down thoughts and personal memories about some songs, but didn't see how to turn that into a text. The soultion: make these into liner notes! The ensuing problem: If I do it for a handful tracks, I should do it for all of them. So off to wrok (and work it turned out to be, foolish me...). The next ensuing problem: word count! I didn't think the longest write-up on this blog would involve hip hop! At a cool 2500 words plus, get ready to know more about my hip hop favotites from the late 80s to the early 00s than you ever dared to ask!

Fun fact: I added some fun facts to my liner notes!

Other fun fact: That of course made these liner notes even longer! 

OBG twenty years from now, listening to hip hop after all these years (artist illustration)

You will see that my predilection of hip hop tracks is as old school as most of these tracks, as a cool sample or hook will get me anytime. Great word play is the cherry on top of that. But yeah;, hip hop for me is a music that has to move and make you want to move when you listen to it. Which is why most odern rap variations (trap etc.) with their barely there grooves,  often somnolent rhythms and electornically enhanced beats really don't do much for me. When some of my young wards try to play a modern rap song to me, I'm mostly "Meh. That's not real hip hop, folks". But whaddayaknow, middle aged man and clouds... 

Anyhoo, since there is a lot of stuff to get through, let's get to it shall we?

Be Faithful

Let’s start the bash in style, with an absolute banger from my clubbing days. In fact, this was THE banger in the nightclub of my choice, the After Shave (RIP). Whenever the first beats of this kicked in, everyone stormed the (really small) dancefloor, followed the call-and-response type action, did the “engine no. 9” nursery rhyme and yelled “pick it up!pick it up!pick it up!”, and then went crazy when Scoop’s “let’s go!” brings the beat back, turning into human pogo sticks. Ah, good times. So, ladies, fellas: “If you got long hands, throw your hand up/if you got short hands, make noise!”

Fun Fact: Clearance issues of the copious samples and interpolations in the song prevented an official wide release of the (revised) track until 2003, but enterprising DJs around the world, such as the ones in the Aftershave, had it since it got first released in 1999.

Not Fun Fact: Sadly, Fatman Scoop died while performing last year, so also RIP.

The retro dancefloor of the Aftershave (notice the miniture mirrored disco ball!). This is where the party started, continued and ended... 

Cold Rock A Party

The soundtrack of my high school graduation. Fantastic sample from “Upside Down” that won’t let you keep your feet still. A buddy of ours with the best sound system would fire this up, open the trunk for mightier sound and then we would groove to that tune in the high school parking lot. My dance moves for this were inspired by John Travolta’s twist in Pulp Fiction. It was pretty fly for a white guy.

Fun fact: MC Lyte was the first female rap artist signed to an album deal.

X Gon Give It To Ya

DMX mostly passed me by during his heyday, but this banger – last year revived for an ad here in France – is what I like about my hip hop: irresistible hook, endlessly propulsive. Darkman's rough vocals aren't something I'd listen to all day, but for a one-off I'm all in.

Fun fact: The ad in question is for automatically passing the toll booths on France's paying highways...

Young OBG trying to impress with his hip hop dance moves (artist illustration)

Hit ‘Em Up [Single Shooter AK 47 Version]

Veteran music journalist Mikal Gilmore called this song in The Rolling Stone The Decades of Rock'n'Roll “the hardest-hitting, most eventful song...of Shakur's career...I had never heard anything remotely like Tupac Shakur's breathless performanceon this track in all my years of listening to pop music.It contains a truly remarkable amount of rage and agression – enough to make anything in punk seem flaccid by comparison”. He’s a hundred percent right. Whatever you think of its content, it’s an astonishing track. Tupac opens the hostilities before the music even kicks in and goes right for the throat (or the nuts): “So I fucked your bitch, you fat motherfucker!” he launches in the direction of Christopher Wallace a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. a.k.a. Biggie Smalls a.k.a. (insert a hundred other nicknames). And it doesn’t get any friendlier from there. This is essentially the sound of someone running amok verbally, and there is something perversely exhilarating about hearing Tupac unloading clip after clip of verbal ammo into Biggie and the entire Bad Boy crew.

The original version featured Outlawz, a group of young protegés Tupac tried to launch in the last months before his untimely death, but their guest verses are run of the mill bragging and threatening that distract from rather than add to Tupac's tour de force. So I got rid of all the Outlawz verses, . thus the “single shooter version” with only 2 Pac (you'll get the AK 47 part when you listen to it). “I don't even know why I'm on this track” he says at the beginning of the original version, but we know, Tupac, we know.

Paparazzi

My introduction to Xzibit, before he became way more known in Europe for MTV's Pimp My Ride series rather than his rap releases. Nothing much to say 'bout this one, just a very solid brag track dissing weak and wannabe MCs with a memorable hook.

Fun fact: Proving no one is safe, the operatic female 'backing vocals' are from a sampled Barbara Streisand!

"Hit 'em up...until they come and hit me up..."

Sunshine

Just a good, breezy rap track feat. prime support of Babyface on the sung chorus and Foxy Brown duetting/dueling with Jay-Z. I really like the beat (built on four samples) on this one.

Fun fact: One of the songs sampled is by Kraftwerk!

I Got 5 On It

Jordan Peele's interesting if uneven Us made great use of the spooky properties of Luniz' biggest hit. The hook, built on Club Nouveau's “Why You Treat Me So Bad” is just an absolute killer. I didn't get the lyrics about splitting up your bag of weed at the time, but it didn't matter, if was just a really cool groove to get into to a teenage OBG.

Funky Cold Medina

The oldest track on this comp and one that never fails to make me smile. Tone-Loc's deadpan delivery of his misadventures involving the can't seem to fail aphrodisiac of the title always cracks me up. It's also crackin' storytelling, a comedy of errors in which Tone-Loc's weary narrator gets from one uncomfortable situation into the next: “I got every damn dog in the neighbourhood breakin' down my door!”. “But when she got undressed, it was a big ol' mess – Sheena was a man!” et al. Funky and funny as hell.

"Don't worry guys, everything is going a-okay with that funky cold medina, easy peasy..."

California Love

“Well, let me welcome everybody to the wild wild west, a state that's untouchable like Elliott Ness”. The first time I heard Two Pac and Dr. Dre (two for the price of one!). The music video has the weird distinction of being a soul brother to Duran Duran's “Wild Boys” - as both rip off the apocalyptic imagery of the Mad Max universe, here riffing on Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Dre's rumbling delivery and then Pac's rapid-fire second verse set up nicely their mission statement, set to a super funky hook made up of three samples, but especially Joe Cocker's “Woman To Woman”.

Gasolina

More proof that this music can be more about rhythm than lyrics, since I speak just enough Spanish to order a beer, yet the feel of the track is much more important than whatever Daddy Yankee says (it’s all about sex, man, or so I'm told). The video version was a weird sort-of medley with another, much smoother r'nb song, capped by a really cool, agressive rap section. So this newly created mix by yours truly is the single version with the rap verse from the longer version edited smack dab into the middle. This is the way the song should have been issued in the first place. Ladies and gentlemen: start your engines.

Everybody loves Raymond!...(he's a bit noisy and excitable, though)

Fire It Up

Busta Rhymes', uh, extroverted rapping style can become exhausting over the long run of an album, but be exhilarating for a single track, such as on my favorite track which brilliantly samples the theme from Knight Rider (why did it take so long for someone to do that?!?) which of course I was a fan of when I was young. Turbo boost!

Fun Fact: Busta mimics The Hoff talking to K.I.T.T. In the middle of the track.

Regulate

Another brillant sample, from the opening of Michael McDonalds' “I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)”, proving once again how you can even make L.A. soft rock sound ominous and menacing in the right reworking. G-Funk, as Warren G dubbed his smooth style, promising 'a whole new era' (which, well, didn't necessarily come to pass), was an outgrowth of new jack swing, and indeed, even the gangsta rap part by Nate Dogg is incredibly smooth, rapping about shooting up people in a relaxed, even casual manner: “Now they're droppin' and yellin', it's a tad bit late, Nate Dogg and Warren G had to regulate”.

Fun Fact: The opening, explaining what a regulator is, is of course from better-than-you-think Brat Pack western Young Guns.

"We regulate any stealin' of this property..."

Ride Wit Me

Coming at the tail end of me actively listening to hip hop, this was pretty much inescapable during my college year in the US. Nelly, putting the midwest on the hip hop map, never was as big in ol' Europe as he was in the US, but the light, good-natured flow of this makes it a perfect bop along party anthem. Hey! Must be the money!

(Holy Matrimony) Letter To The Firm

When female rappers really broke through big in the mid-90s (not counting influential acts like Salt'n'Pepa or TLC before) most of the attention was focused on two very young ladies, Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown and their supposed rivalry (mostly invented at the time, but which later turned into a real one). I always largely preferred Inga Marchand a.k.a. Foxy Brown: her delivery was crisper and there's a smokey timbre to her voice that always gave her tracks the edge, in my humble view. Foxy has been cited by tody's reigning rap queen Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion as a major influence.

Fun fact: Quentin Tarantino had the good taste to put this into Jackie Brown, in the scene where Robert Forster's lovestruck bail bondsman Max Cherry goes out to buy a Delfonics cassette (!). It was of course also a cheeky callback to lead actress' Pam Grier's most famous role in a film nerd easter egg, thus very Tarantino kind of way.

"'Suggestive album cover' you say?...frankly, Mr. Shankly, I don't know what you mean..." 

Jump

One of my first exposures to hip hop outside of, erm, Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. Unlike those two, the young Chrises from Kriss Kross had some legitimate mic skills, even at just 13 and 14 years old which explains the slightly squeaky voices, though most credit should probably go to producer Jermaine Dupri for coming up with “Jump”.The 'totally krossed out' gimmick, where the two would wear their clothes backwards – probably also mainstream's first exposure to extremely baggy baggy pants – was a nice touch, but this track is a banger with or without it. “Some of 'em try to rhyme but they can't...”

O.P.P.

Built on an immediately recognizable sample from the Jackson's “ABC”, I let Treach from Naughty By Nature take this one: “'O.P.P.' is about crazy messing with other people's girls...girls messing, guys messing...so everybody could relate, the fellas and the girls, and it's got a hook for the party and everybody can crazy groove to it”. What he said. Just a really good groover that burst into the pop charts and was one of the genre's first mainstream crossover hits outside of..you know..the aforementioned Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer.

"Gentlemen, absolutely no smiling, alright...remember your band name..."

Most listennnnnnn [skit]

What would a rap album be without a skid?

Well, probably a whole lot better, really, as skits were one of the banes of the 90s and 2000s rap albums, needlessly filling up space with stuff that either was never funny in the first place or skippable after one or two listens. Coupled with most rap artist overegging the pudding by wheeling out thirteen or fourteen tracks, most rap albums of the time are running close to or over 70 minutes which is awfully long to sit through relatively like-minded and similar sounding music.

Having said all that, there's a couple of skits that never fail to amuse me, including this diss from the G-Unit into the direction of Ja Rule. They're not even on the track, they have a radio announcer advertise a fake duets album of Ja Rule rapping over the mainstream hits of the day by Shakira, Pink, Britney Spears and Nickelback. The fake Ja Rule stumbling through these without any regard of rhythm or fit is never not funny. Hard clowning, but funny clowning. Hollaaaaaaaa!

99 Problems (Grey Album version)

Ah, The Grey Album, one of the first big mash-up releases that really caught on in the early aughts and in an instance made Brian Joseph Burton a.k.a. Danger Mouse into a household name in 2004. It was an ingenious idea, combining Jay-Z's vocals from his Black Album with samples from the songs on the Beatles' eponymous album, known to everyone and their mother as The White Album.

“99 Problems” is for me by far the strongest track from The Grey Album because it takes what is Jay-Z's best rap and marries it to the rock-based samples of “Helter Skelter”, giving the whole thing a propulsive energy that the original “99 Problems” simply doesn't have. The little “aaaahs”, the guitar riff and descending guitar line and furious drumming of Ringo – what a ruckus, over which Jay-Z spits some of his best rhymes, relating a driving while black encounter: “'Son, do you know what I'm stopping you for?' 'Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low? Do I look like a mind reader, sir, I don't know! Am I under arrest or should I guess some more?”

Fun Fact: Danger Mouse founded Gnarls Barkley with rapper Cee-Lo Green shortly afterwards, a duo you no doubt remember for their monster hit “Crazy.

Great concept, great cover art...no snark on this one

Changes

The first posthumous release in what turned out to be a huge amount of unreleased and then fnished after the fact recordings by Shakur. This is certainly one of the best, leaning hard into the hook from Bruce Hornsby & The Range's “The Way It Is”. The soulful backing vocals by Talent on the chorus are great, and Tupac is in peak form here, spitting out socio-economic rhymes about being young black men prone to a life of crime and violence in the city. It isn't quite “What's Going On” for the 1990s, but it's pretty close. And it of course ominously points to the end: “And as long as I stay black/ I gotta stay strapped / and I never get to lay back / 'cuz I always have to worry 'bout the payback / some young buck that I roughed up way back / comin' back after all these years/ rat-rat-tat-tat-tat / That's the way it is”. And that's the way it (almost) was.