Let the sunshine...let the sunshine...shine over some Alabama ridges and creeks...again...

Okay, okay, if you have been here for a long time, you realize that this album is a bit of a 'the emperor's new clothes' proposition, essentially a repackaging of an album I posted back in February 2024. But I think quite a number of you weren't there for it, and that album passed a lot of folks by, and it really shouldn't. A couple of days ago the album came on in the car, and I once again marveled at how splendid this album is. You can read up more about it in its original write-up, but I'll just quickly quote myself, because I still like what I wrote back then. Here's OBG from about 21 months ago. 

Songs like "Montgomery Town", "Ridge Song" and "Madison" sound like old friends, and once you've heard them you'll never want to let them leave. Well, I don't. Not to mention that in between these and Steve Young's "Seven Bridges Road", Madison County starts to sound like the most beautiful place on earth. Law at times has a perfectly 70s cosmic cowboy thing going, getting metaphysical on tracks like "Tomorrow's Always Today" or "Shine Sunshine". Or, you know, maybe good ol' George was just a heavy stoner, after all he did name his label Bongwater Records. 

He is backed on the album by jazz-prog group Backwater, which includes producer Tom Nist. This might also explain the rich instrumentation, including flugelhorn, clavinet and electric organ. That is probably also one of the secrets to the beauty of this album: The warmth and richness of its sound, certainly unusual for a self-released, private press record. 

George Law really does sound like the best parts of your favorite 70s music, or at least, well, mine. "Martha's Song" sounds like Jackson Browne wrote and sings it, while on beautiful album closer "Shine Sunshine" he sounds a little like Jimmy Spheeris. Even the least memorable track on this album (my vote: "Clouded Mind") is never less than beautifully played and sung. But really, there are no losers here. All killer, no filler, as they like to say, and all that in half an hour. Short and sweet.

Listen to this, it'll be the best half hour you can spend on music, or almost. 

And it still is. And yet, there was one area of improvement. I already clowned on Law and his goofy-ass mug that adorns the cover in the original write-up, but this album which -  as said - sounds amazing for a private release needs some better cover art. Something which represents the sound and feel of the album within. After having spent a long time perusing pictures of Yellow Leaf Creek, I finally opted for a picture of some Alabama sunshine over a mountain ridge that recalls both "Ridge Song" and the fabulous "Shine Sunshine", which is the newly minted title song. 

If you already have this, I hope you love it already and just wonder whether you should upgrade the cover art. and if you don't have it, then get this immediately. It's a truly wonderful little record, and during these dark, and at least in these parts, rainy winter days will bring a bit of sunshine your way... 

Tipton, Missouri's favorite son is covered once more...

It's been a good while that One Buck Records has gone without a sighting of anything Gene Clark-related and that state of affairs has been going on long enough, you hear me young man middle-aged dude? Oh, sorry, the voices in my head have spilled on the page again. Yes, long time no Geno, or friends and fans of Geno as it were. We've Got You Covered goes on, and we're up to Volume Four of our Gene Clark part of the series. And honestly, that is a bit of a surprise in itself, because for a man with such an outstandingly strong songbook, Clark doesn't have many high-profile covers attached to his name. This gets even worse once we take off Byrds material, which is naturally what most of the bigger names flocked to (we see you, Tom Petty). But even if we take musicians of any kind, level of fame or walk of life, there just isn't much there, and wht there is, will inevitably end up here, in this series, on this blog. 

Part of this is of course my own blind spot concerning one of my favorite artists. Clark is so well-represented on this blog, that I sometimes forget how small of a cultural imprint the man really left. Even the Genaissance of the early 2010s didn't make him into a real household name. Sure, the No Other Band tour and the No Other album re-issue on 4AD brought on some people, but the cult stays small. 

Which of course means that I am really digging, and digging hard, to find material for this series. The good news is, that for this fourth volume, I have found another batch of top material, with the usual mix of known and little-to-unknown performers. The big names on this volume are probably Richard Thompson (who already featured on Vol. 3 with Fairport Convention), the Flamin' Groovies with their take on "She Don't Care About Time " - also the kick-ass opener here - and Pure Prairie League, whose fine take on "She Darked The Sun" somehow never made an album in the early 70s. Oh, and there's Paul Weller, as guest singer with Death In Vegas, covering "So You Say You Lost Your Baby", a song I found years ago when fishing Death In Vegas' album out of a bargain bin, for, indeed a buck, I believe. 

Mid-tier acts which again are really known in One Buck Land but not everwhere else include the late, great Neal Casal with "With Tomorrow" from his cover record Return In Kind, and of course loyal-way-beyond-the-grave comrade Carla Olson, who is supported on her cover of "After The Storm" by *checks notes* 80's Brat Pack actress Mare Winningham?! O.k., why not. Brother Rick also shows up again, with a lovely rendering of the heartbreaking "Lonely Saturday", written after Clark broke up with his common-law wife Carlie. 

Of the 'never heard of 'em'-tier of artists, I'm happy to hear Chris Deschner cover "Rain Song" from Clark's last studio album Fyrebyrd, as that's a song that, like the rest of that album, almost never gets attention despite its obvious qualities. Australia's The Bitter End cover "The Virgn", Anna Mitchell has a wonderful, recorded line in concert take on "Polly Come Home", Byrds contemporaries Suburban 9 To 5 bring lots of garage rock energy to "Elevator Operator", in no small part due to future REO Speedwagon axeman Gary Richrth on guitar, and U.S. Indie group Mazarin do a fine job with the also very rarely covered "Only Colombe". 

As you can see, lots of artists and songs to discover or re-discover, and the One Buck Guy wouldn't want it any other way...

Go to your respective rooms, you rabblerousing Elton John covers!!!

So, this is how it goes sometimes. In the thread for last weekend's Tina Turner post reader Thames brought up Two Rooms, the tribute record to the songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, via Tina Turner's excellent cover of "The Bitch Is Back". Which in turn led to us discussing Two Rooms as one of the best various artists tribute albums, with nothing to throw or skip. I realized also that it had probably been years that I last listened to it. 

I discussed Tina's AOR years a bit last weekend, revealing my childhood-memory-related knack for AOR radio. Well, am I covered with Two Rooms or what? Bryan Adams is missing, but otherwise all the usual suspects I would hear on the radio are here: Tina, Phil, Rod, Joe Cocker, Sting, et al. Not a hipster-approved assembly of musicians, for sure, but the star power here is undeniable. Throw in The Who for one of their one-off reunions, the Beach Boys still riding high on the memory of "Kokomo", Kate Bush, plus three recent female sensations. Shinead O'Connor had just broken through the year before with "Nothing Compares To You 2 U", Wilson Phillips had become a success out of nowhere with "Hold On" and "Release Me" both topping the charts, and Oleta Adams had toiled away in semi-obscurity until Tears For Fears found her in a Kansas City nightclub and featured her on 1989's The Seeds Of Love, including her amazing co-lead vocals on top hit "Woman In Chains". 

It's a strictly personal thing, but there are a couple of numbers here that I prefer to John's originals. O'Connor's deeply emotional take on "Sacrifice" completely dusts John's slightly too MOR version. Something about Elton's falsetto 'na-na-na-na's' in "Crocodile Rock" has always deeply grated me to the point where I would skip the song or change the station when it came on, but The Beach Boys cut a great version of it.  Even as extremely diminished as this version of the Boys was, they could still record quality cuts from time to time, and this one, with its retro rock'n'roll feel and doo-wop vocals stylings was an open lay-up that the Boys didn't miss. Thames and I agree on Tina's "The Bitch Is Back" (which, say, Allmusic singled out for criticism) being great and its lyrical content arguably more fitting for Tina's persona, and The Who's version of "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" has only grown in my estimation, as - like the Beach Boys cut - it showed their unmistakeable band sound while also paying honest tribute to the original. 

It might not best the original, but Kate Bush's version of "Rocket Man" is extremely interesting (and was voted 'best cover of all time' by the readers of The Observer). Bush, ever musically adventurous, marries moody synths to a light reggae rhythm, and then later in the song the Celtic instrumentation she started to explore in the late 80s comes in. This version of the song sounds like nothing else. Every song got a little annotation by the artists in the booklet, mostly little love letters that explained their love for Elton or the song in question, and how they first heard it etc. Here's Shinead O'Connor's text in its entirety: "I can't believe no one did 'Candle In The Wind'." Truly, the (in)famous no bullshit/speak your mind attitude of Ms. O'Connor on full display. Back then I didn't get it and found that comment weird, now I find it absolutely brillant. 

As said before, everything on here is good to very good, and nothing is eminently skippable. And yet, and yet, listening to the album in its original configuration your hand might still linger towards the skip-button, because Two Rooms is an unwieldy album. Before ripping it to Mp3s this week I hadn't realized that the album is 79 minutes long, taking full advantage of CD-capacity, while also testing the listening capacity of its audience. If you have been here long enough and read along a bit, you know that I harp on a lot about flow and sequencing and perfect length for comps. Well, guess what, folks, I'll take that ol' hobbyhorse for another tour 'round the stables today. So, I think that any listeners gets kind of tired and worn out by around the 70 minute mark, and its true that with the original Two Rooms, despite George Michael's closing number "Tonight" being one of the highlights here, you were rightly slipping in attention by that point. 

And of course, as I'm prone to, I had some problems with the sequencing. I found Eric Clapton's Dr. John-styled take on "Border Song" to not be a terribly great choice for an opener, Sting's austere "Border Song" came too early in the program etc. etc. You know, the usual OBG gripes.  Oh, and that Sinead O'Connor aside about no one doing "Candle In The Wind"? Well, someone did! Kate Bush cut her version of that song as the b-side to, or technically, a double a-side with "Rocket Man". So it made sense to include that here, even if it is less adventurous than her take on "Rocket Man". What also made sense to include, because it came out in parallel to this compilation, was George Michael's live version of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me", featuring Elton John himself. The reaction of Wembley Stadium to John appearing as a surprise guest on that duet, introduced by George with the now legendary 'Ladies And Gentlemen, Mr. Elton John' is amazing, a gargantuan crowd pop for John, whose European-wide release of The Very Best Of the year before had brought him back into the spotlight. 

Bringing out his version of "Sun" - recorded as his version of "Tonight" on the album during his Cover To Cover tour - was a savvy move by George. Two Rooms colleague Oleta Adams' gospel-take on the very same song was chosen as the album's lead single and had been out for two months, reminding people of the greatness of the song, then Michael's version climbed to number one on both sides of the Atlantic. And, honestly, it's probably the best version of this song, hands down.  

So, the solution to the above-mentioned issues, with an already long running time now seeing two extra tracks included? Why, treat the whole thng like a vinyl rather than a CD affair. If sequenced into a double vinyl album configuration with a running time of 45 minutes per album/disc, the whole thing becomes a whole lot more digestable. The two albums/discs - or, in the parlance of the comp - two rooms - were sequenced according to my personal taste, obviously, but also for a good flow between slower and quicker numbers. Both have a great rock'n'roll number as openers ("Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)" and "Crocodile Rock"), a moody female-led track right after ("Rocket Man" and "Sacrifice") and so on, both ending with a big George Michael live number. I think this improves the flow considerably, and - if taken in two hearings rather then the extremely long original one - go down better. 

Two Rooms will appeal to you, if you have a heart for veteran rockers'n'poppers and the AOR sound of the late-80s and early-90s, as your host does. If nothing else, these songs will remind you what a writing team John& Taupin could be, as they were supposed to. I'd say that's already more than enough. So leave your hipster cred by the door and dive in... 

Feel The Goo Once More! Get Those Dolls Lined Up! For GOOd Old Days Are Here Again!

Having recently mentioned the Goos over at Jokonky's (and reupped the fabulous original GOOd Old Days, that you should get if you don't have it yet), I remembered that I had never posted the second volume of my sojourn through the Goo Goo Dolls' discography. Time to rectify that. GOOd Old Days Are Here Again is, in many ways, a real 'Greatest Hits Vol. 2', as record companies would throw it out in the olden days. Since all the real big hits were already on Volume 1, Vol. 2 has deep cuts and minor hits, together with the occasional big hit that was already on the first volume, in a live or demo version. So, you get the same thing here, 

This compilation is also a tale in two parts. The (d)evolution of the Goos is clearly on display here. From their grunting punk rock beginnings towards the corporate-disguised-as-alternative rock of the mid- and late-90s to the increasingly AOR/adult contemporary music of the 2000s all the way to now. So, if you prefer the Goos as a kick-ass rock band, you can probably cut off this comp after the first twelve songs or so, if your aversion to, uh, slighly gooey adult contemporary ballads is high, you can probably listen all the way through and find the occasional highlight in the back half of the comp. 

What you will get here, though, with the big hits out of the way which were pretty much all Johnny Rzeznick's, is a bit more of Robbie Takaj. As the original lead vocalist for the first two albums, Takaj was always the lovable caveman sidekick to pretty boy Johnny, with an appropriately grunting and primitive take on things. Where Rzeznick's songs would become slicker and hookier and tailored to mainstream radio, Takaj pretty much stuck with a simple 'pedal to the medal' approach to rock, which nicely contrasted with Rzeznick's style on the two or three numbers he would get on each album. Since the, uh, songwriting of their self-titled debut is, uh, rather undistinguished - to go with the muffled, rudimentary sound of this $750 production - I decided to include their cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper"; "James Dean" from follow-up Jed is Rzeznick's first lead vocal and the first acoustic song the Goos ever did - the road to stardom starts here, even if the song itself isn't a precursor, but rather a prolonged set up for a so-so joke. 

And from 1990's Hold Me Up on, it was essentially Rzeznick's show, with "Just The Way You Are" announcing the more professional and slicker sound that would carry the band through the 90s and to millions of record sales. Lots of crunchy guitars and nice hooks here. The 'sneak in some hits' tactic yields acoustic versions of breakthrough hit "Name" and "Slide". There are also some genuine hits I didn't include on GOOd Old Days: "Broadway" (in a live version I prefer to the studio cut) and "Black Balloon", Takaj checks back in with "Amigone" from Dizzy Up The Girl, showing how much slicker even his songs were, and from then, well, we enter the AOR portion of the Goos. 2010's "The Sweetest Lie" brings up some crunchy guitars for a last time, while 2019's "Miracle Pill" from the same album is pure pop, but it's really well-made pop. 

So, ready for round two with the Goos for a kick-ass start in your weekend? Goo for it...

Blue And Gray: Poco's Trip Through A Land Torn Apart...

So, after singing the praises for the Eagles' Desperado, here's the second album in a series of country rock albums depicting life in the U.S. in the 19th Century, we go back to one of the OG's of country rock, who by the time they made this album were anything but. Poco might've been one of the first bands playing country rock, but by the time they brought out Blue And Gray, they were anything but. Hell, they weren't even Poco anymore. After the band went on indefinite hiatus when Tim Schmit left to join the Eagles (with the well-wishes of the band, who all felt they had played out the string with Poco). But Paul Cotton and Rusty Young liked to work with each other and decided to continue as The Cotton-Young band, recruiting a new rhythm section and a bit later on keyboard player Kim Bullard. But ABC Records only wanted to release their record under a known name (I.P. isn't just a key word of the last decade or so!), so Poco was reborn. 

The band's first album, Legend, was an instant hit, the first of Poco's long and storied career, and for the first time the band had hit singles: "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night". A quick follow-up, Under The Gun, stiffed however. After trying in vain to replicate Legend, Poco then did something totally unexpected: devisiong a concept album about the Civil War that tore America apart. Blue And Gray was born. 

Young and Cotton never were more than serviceable lyricists, so don't expect any particular insights or authenticity from the lyrics here, everything is kept very vague, with numerous allusions to trouble and conflict brewing in the near or far distance, but little in the way of specifics. Which, given the pair's limitations is probably for the better. There is, however, a fairly subtle concept here that is worth pointing out: Both alternating songwriters represent an opposing point of view and is playing the role of one of the two belligerents, but with a twist: Rusty Young wasn't a Southerner - born in California and raised in Colorado - but he takes over the perspective of the Gray. Paul Cotton, however, was technically a Southerner, born in Fort Rucker, Alabama, but was raised in Illinois, so he is taking the prespective of the Blue. 

Generally speaking, Cotton's songs hold together the best as a sort of loose travelogue of a Northern soldier lost in war-torn enemy territory, a kind of Cold Mountain fifteen years before the novel. Like Young's Southerner(s?), Cotton's Northern soldier says goodbye to his loved one in "Please Wait For Me", then when we catch up to him in this version of Blue And Gray, he is injured and deep in the land of the enemy, making his way through the bayous of Louisiana in the hopes of catching a northbound ship in "Streets Of Paradise". Later, this soldier encounters a single enemy soldier and they both prepare themselves to shoot out who will survive the confrontation in "Sometimes (We Are All We Got)". And then we're leaving him still hoping to catch that ship up north and hoping to go "Down On The River Again". 

Rusty Young's songs tend - as they usually would - towards the nostalgic and sentimental, with not one but two songs about the romantic farewells to the troops marching of into war. But whereas "Glorybound", the opener of Blue And Gray captures the optimism of the troops, by the time of the title song Young's narrator realizes that it will not all just be fun and glory: "Baby, now something ain't right / clouds of thunder roll into sight". Still, "The Writing On The Wall" seems to have the soldiers as following a higher calling. Young's groovy and slightly spooky"Widowmaker" is one of his best compositions of the period, but seems to come from another album altogether. Generally speaking, they are so vague in their lyrics that half of them could be about something different than the Civil War. 

But, you know, give them points for trying. Poco had realized that they were at somewhat of an impasse: Under The Gun, despite having a good title song, didn't nearly make the numbers that Legend and its hit singles "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night" did. So Poco decided to go for something more ambitious, even if it didn't quite hold together, mostly due to Young's inability to hold up his end of the deal. Cotton's songs are not only the better compositions, they are highlights, because they bring back hints of Poco's classic country rock sound that were completely missing from their last two albums. Young brings out mandolin, banjo and dobro for three of Cotton's four songs, which helps make them the highlights here, particularly "Sometimes (We Are All We Got)", which is as good as anything the real Poco produced from 1968 to 1977. 

There were two issues with the original album: One was a poor flow with haphazard and not particularly successful sequencing. The two rather slowish Young numbers that opened the album made for a not very succesful start. Inserting Cotton's "Please Wait For Me" in between "Glorybound" and "Blu And Gray" worked wonders, then I rejiggered the rest for a better listening experience. The other probelm was that even for a scant ten-track album , the group couldn't come up with enough songs that fit the concept, so Young just put "Here Comes That Girl Again", an insipid ballad on there, that on this improved version of the album quickly gets shown the door. Instead I inserted the only track worth mentioning of Gray And Blue's successor Cowboys And Englishmen, an awful contract-filler album full of mediocre covers that made Poco sound like a bar band on a slowly tuesday night. Besides all the awful covers, Rusty Young at least has the good sense to bring out one original song, the medley of the old-timey "Ashes"  - which alwas was quite repertitive - and the sprightly country instrumental "Feudin'". The latter is now part of this version of Blue And Gray, with its title fitting the theme and, at least in my mind, illustrating the feuds that would pop up in the rural border regions of the war, and now had an 'official' reason/excuse for existing. Interestingly, it won Poco the only Grammy of their career for 'Best Instrumental Performance'. 

So, this OBG version of Blue And Gray is, if nothing else, an improvement on the original, and an interesting, if pretty much totally fogotten, look at a soft rock band trying to get ambitious. I'm not trying to oversell this album as some sort of fabulous forgotten treasure, but it's an album well worth hearing, and arguably the best of the band's extremely checkered 80s releases. Whether you're a history or Civil War buff or not, there's enough good stuff here to follow Poco on their trip into the 1860s...

P.S.: The music for the other two Poco Alternate Albums on this blog have recently been updated, so if you want to go on a Poco listening spree...

Tina Turner - Definitely An Undisputable Rock'n'Roller

I really don't think you'll get any serious argument from anybody that Rita Mae Bullock a.k.a. Tina Turner did her best work artistically when accompanied by husband/producer/abuser Ike. I mean, "River Deep Mountain High" alone should make her a first-ballot hall of famer. And their amazing two-tempos cover of CCR's "Proud Mary"? At least as good as the original. Commercially, though? Man, did her 80s comeback and the ensuing years of reigning on AOR radio belatedly fill in the coffers, not to mention give her some long-deserved respect and reputation. Of course, no one deserved it more than Tina, not only for all the evil shit from Ike she had to put up with, bt also because when she started her solo career in the 70s, she ws basically left for dead. That a decade later she would fill stadiums and reign the charts was...not something a lot of people would have put money on in, say, 1975. 

The title of the compilation I sourced most of the music here from is called Queen Of Rock'n'Roll, but you know what was missing from it? Real, bad ass rock'n'roll! Most of the tracks wade in a very safe AOR mainstream sound that rocks a little bit, but please not too much or too hard to not chase any radio listeners away. And to be fair, Queen Of Rock'n'Roll had another issue. Three discs with 20 songs each is an impressive package, but 60 tracks mostly from Tina's AOR/Adult Contemporary years is...a lot of the same thing which is not the best thing. There is not a lot of music from discs 2 and 3 covering the late 80s, 90s and early 2000s on this comp, and that despite me having a natuarally high resistance to mainstream AOR radio Tina. 

That was my Tina, as she was inescable on the channels my parents listened to in the car, or occasionally at home, when I was young. So yeah, gimme "The Best", gimme the "It Takes Two" duet with fellow AOR hero Rod Stewart, hell, gimme her cover of John Waite's "Missing You", a great AOR treasure in its own right, that I didn't remember her covering. But the ton of mid-tempo, just sort of there AOR/adult contemporary fare was left in the dust, and this badly needed an injection of more rock'n'roll, so I added a bunch of rockers, movers and shakers: "Steel Claw" from Private Dancer which deserves better than being an almost forgotten album track, the driving "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby", the chugging early "Bayou Song"  plus a folk/country rock-ish take on "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You", and "Rock'n'Roll Widow", a Private Dancer era b-side that is just on the right side of the line concerning power ballads.

Now we're talking Queen Of Rock'n'Roll, or rather Undisputed Rock'n'Roller, as the compilationj is now called. Epecially when also highlighting her superb and quite transformative cover of "Whole Lotta Love", one of my favorite covers ever, with a really intriguing funk plus stabbing strings arrangement, as well as new (almost) title song and early barn burner "Root Toot, Undisputable Rock'n'Roller", and mid-80s singalong classic "We Don't Need Another Hero". Throw in her slinky and/or sassy covers of "Let's Stay Together", "Help" (a U.K. only single) and "I Can't Stand The Rain" plus the Bowie torch song "Girls" and you have yourself an attractive package of what Ol' One Buck Guy thinks is some of the best work of Tina's solo career.

Check out these twenty tracks and see if you agree. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Queen Of Rock'n'Roll, an Undisputable Rock'n'Roller...

And The Electric Eighties Just Keep On Comin'

When I posted the alt Trans last sunday, I didn't think I'd follow it up with another Neil Young post, nor that it would align completely with this, our next installment of the granddaddy of 'em all (series here on One Buck Records, that is), All Pearls, No Swine. This volume is not only set in the 80s, but like the slow riders before them, it is a special themed edition of All Pearls, No Swine. In this case: synths, baby, synths! Condisering that the musical directions on my 80s-set APNS volumes seemed to go further into all kinds of directions, I thought I'd group the electro- and synth stuff together in one handy volume. And so this is it. 

A lot of these are again from obscure releases - yet the album also contains a hit, though I didn't realize how big of a hit that was when I compiled this. That track, Freur's "Doot Doot" is also proof that the details of when you consciously hear a song for the first time matter: I was visiting family, in a rented appartment, with nothing on TV worth watching, so I put on satellite radio and said there in the half-dark living room, when suddenly this little synth intro and those little 'doot' 'doot' came swirling around me. I was mesmerized by that song's opening. I realized only later that I already had the song on one of those 80s hits compilations you had to pick up in the old days before finding everything (or almost) on the internet, and for years, but it never registered. It was this very specific listening situation that made me fall in love with Freur's "Doot Doot" and that's why it's here. 

Oh, okay, you guys...I see you got that 80s thing down pat...

There are some other somewhat known names here: The Psychedelic Furs sneak in with the US Remix of "Love My Way" and if you know the origins of your beloved mid-80s AOR bands you might remember that Mr. Mister's Richard Page and Steve George started as a synth-pop outfit called Pages who are represented with "Automatic". You might also remember 'The White Zulu' Johnny Clegg from South Africa, who had a couple of international hits, the biggest of which is probably "Scatterlings Of Africa", also featured on the soundtrack for Rain Man. Here he's climbing "Kilimanjaro" with his first group Juluka, notably the first interracial group out of South Africa. And finally, Johnny Stew strikes again. I already highlighted John Stewart's new wave adventures, but he really throws on the sequencer and dips fully into synth rock with his "Home From The Stars" whose opening sounds like a lost Vangelis track. 

But the rest of the album is, as it should be, filled with virtual unknowns, one-off adventures, private press adventurers or never-was's (as opposed to has been's). Some of this is what some would call outsider art, like Bryce Wemple's DIY synth rock on "Scene 58", Apeiron's "Dancing Spirits" (which was only ever issued on casette tape) or Michael Iceberg with his, uh, idiosyncratic cover of "Here Comes The Sun". There is also a distinct World music aspect here: Canadian synth poppers Strange Advance are back with "She Controls Me", and, from the ranks of the amaeurish and completely unknown, we also have German electropop outfit Caraganda with the weirdly cheery "Living In A Sect". There's French coldwave band Coldreams with the icy "Eyes" and Kiwi band Dragon who were big in Australia with mainstream-friendly pop rock in the late 1970s, but dip more than a toe into synth/new wave rock on 1983's "Rain", also your kick-ass opener du jour, and, as something of a series tradition, we end things with a longer track, the DIY synth ambient piece "Dancing Spirits" by Apoeira. 

We're coldwave, man, so b/w pics and no one looks at the camera, alright...stare dreamily into the distance, guys...

So, there's tons of things to discover here, if you are somewhat willing to let the synth sounds of the 8às in your heart. And why wont you? If Uncle Neil could do it, if ol' Johnny Stew could do it, so can you...

Keep On Rockin' In An Eighties World, Neil!

So, I hadn't really planned to follow up my alternate Trans post with another Neil Young post so soon afterwards, but as these things go. A comment by C in Cali about a fab live version of "Sample And Hold", my own comment discussing "Landing On Water", in short: the little discussions about (mostly) Eighties Neil and his various misadventures led me to check a live bootleg from the mid-80s that I remembered as really good. It's the famous and a thousand times bootlegged 1986 show from the Cow Palace in Daly City that has absolutely outstanding sound quality. One could argue better sound quality than certain records of Uncle Neil with Crazy Horse. This is, however, no coincidence. Two shows just three and two nights before were recorded for a new album, with some tracks heavily tinkered with, that would turn out to be Life in July 1987. So, two conditions were fulfilled: High end recording equipment was used to tape this show for radio braodcast, and the band was well rehearsed and in fine form. 

Beware though that this is just a small sampler, a companion compilation to that Trans album that thus leaves tons of old Neil warhorses on the side - good as they might be - to focus on his Eighties work. It has three Trans numbers: the "Mr. Soul" electro-remake (without vocoder, but otherwise still very much in the Trans vein), plus really excellent takes on "Computer Age" and "Sample And Hold" (which might be the one you have, C!). It then has most of Neil's best stuff from the rock-oriented Geffen albums of the 80s (no country stuff which I might reserve for another comp in the future): "Violent Side", "Mideast Vacation", "Around The World" - "Hippie Dream" is missing, but most of the good stuff is here. I even had space to smuggle in "Too Lonely" which might be better than that on Life.

The same is even more so true of Reactor number "Opera Star". If you want a version of "Opera Star" in your collection, make it this one. On record, the number is completely ridiculous, especially the duel of ho-ho-ho's between Neil and Crazy Horse, sounding like a drunk Christmas munchkin sing-off, or everyone taking the piss and no one giving a fuck. This version, with barely a ho-ho-ho heard, pounds that original studio version into fine dust, then stomps on its remains just for fun. This is, generally speaking, true for all the rock songs on this. They rock much freakin' harder than their studio counterparts. I do miss the swirling synths Neil added to "Around The World", but this version is a barnburner nonetheless. 

If ever the question is asked what Crazy Horse brought to Neil's music, you might as well play that person some of this - they're just crushing it here. A good example: their great take on "Powderfinger", which I smuggled n as the only-non-80s number in here...So, as said, this is just a teaser to remind you of, and collect in the same place, some of the strongest work of what was admittedly a complicated period for Uncle Neil. But there are songs from that time period that have stood the test of time, especially in these extra heavy versions from Neil and Crazy Horse.  

Giddy up y'all. That there Bluegrass Chartbuster show is in town again!

Time for round three of these, with a-many more coming your way. Originally I planned to have, like, three volumes of this, which means that the series would be coming to their end here. But, uh, that excalated quickly, as the saying goes. So now we're in double digits for the Bluegrass Chartbusters and have no end in sight, so I hope some of y'all are clamoring for more cool bluegrass versions of rock and pop (and punk, and country rock, and so on and so forth) songs from about the last half-century or so. Of course, knowing what I know I would have used the best tracks from my beloved Cornbread Red (pictured below) more sparingly, instead of just piling these onto the first volume especially. Oh well, I just have to go with slimmer pickings and more obscure (to me) songs from these guys once we crawl towards those double digit volumes. Incidentally they have only a single song on this volume, and it's a holdover from the Green Day comp I did a couple of months ago.

That is so because Volume Three became the most reworked of all the episodes here, as I started to really branch out of the safety of the Pickin' On series on later volumes, and then reworked the earlier volumes for more balance: Instead of only having the Pickin On housebands like Cornbread Red, Iron Horse, The Sidekicks and - increasingly - Brad Davis with band on the first handful of volumes and half a dozen other cool acts in later ones I switched and changed and juggled and replaced - and now Volume Three has somehow become the most diverse of all editions in this series - boasting no less that 15 different bands and artists for its twenty tracks! Besides repeat offenders quality contributors like the aforementioned bands we got a number of cool bands that show up here for the first time.

Two bands I recently discovered are the now sadly defunct The Wooks (who are only not called The Wookies for copyright reasons), who were mainly doing original songs, and really good ones, but also recorded the occasional cover, with their fab take on Bruce's "Atlantic City", that is slightly reminiscent of The Band's awesome cajun-flavored almost-bluegrass version. Another great recent discovery are The Grass Cats, also szdly defunct, who had a great twenty-year run, mainly as a local attraction in their home state of North Carolina. They left behind a couple of good albums and some great covers, the first one of which, a really sweet take on REO Speedwagon's "Take It On The Run" graces this volume. Happily the last of my recent discoveries, Town Mountain are still active, they clock in here with their take on alt country classic "Windfall". 

But we'll see more of these bands in the future, which isn't the same for the one-and-done that is Thunder & Rain's, uh, sweet take on "Sweet Child O' Mine". That band mainly does original songs, though they drew a lot of eyeballs on Youtube with this cover a couple of years ago. This is the original live take, not the studio version they put on an album later - this one sounds more natural and spontaneuous. 

By the way, I kind of like how the above cover recalls the mostly generic covers that the Pickin' On Series used for a decade or so before Iron Horse's Metallica album changed how they made, presented and mareketed albums. This looks like something you could take out od a rotating CD rack display in any truck stop in Rednecksville, Anywhere, U.S.A.! And that's on purpose! But it's a hundred times more awesome of course!

Artists covered include CCR, Prince, Pearl Jam, A-Ha, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Eagles/J.D. Souther, The Band, Black Sabbath, Oasis, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I also have to mention opener "Don't Stop Believin'", one of the best numbers of the entire series with some extraordinary mandolin and fiddle work by Pine Mountain Railroad that feel totally at home in the song and turn in from a somewhat hackneyed AOR song into a marvelous bluegrass number.

Anyway, Bluegrass Chartbusters Vol. 3 keeps up the quality of the first two albums, and the tons of new artists on here give the album a real freshness, due to the slightly different varying approaches of covering famous songs in a bluegrass style. Good stuff all around, one again. Get the bluegrass jukebox goin' once more...

Transforming Trans: Neil Young's Electronic Adventures Revisited...

Maybe thinking about that whole misshapen Chris Gaines debacle made me think of other albums where the concept and the things surrounding its creation are more interesting than the music itself. Inevitably, I ended up with one of the most infamous albums that was a mix of weird ambitions, selfindulgence and a genuine sense of discovery: Uncle Neil and Trans. Now, to be fair, it's not that the music isn't interesting (it is) or downright bad (it isn't) , but that it didn't sound like anything Young did before (and would after). Infamously, it was of course also the album that had Young's new record label Geffen shaking their head in disbelief, the first step leading to the label suing Young for making 'uncommercial and uncharacteristic music' later on, when he added the ridiculous rockabilly exercise Everybody's Rockin' six months later as a fuck you to Geffen, when they had rejected country album Old Ways. Now, Everybody's Rockin' really is Young's worst album, a joke that finally was on the listener, in a 'the food was terrible, and such small portions, too' way. Customers paid full price for 25 minutes of awful ersatz rockabilly. In order to annoy Geffen further, Uncle Neil agreed to a promotional video for the better-than-the-rest original "Wonderin'" (a repurposed country number from around 1970), but mugged for the video to ridicule the whole exercise and also looked like a deranged serial killer:

But I digress. Trans, baby! Most of you will probably know the backstory to this album (and there's always Wikipedia), so I'll keep it brief for the few that don't: Young was heavily occupied in the early 8às with caring for his handicapped son Ben, who - like Young's first son, Zeke - was born with cerebral palsy, and was thus unable to communicate verbally. Long, repetitive routines to try to communicate with Ben were part of Neil's daily life, and this repetitiveness crept into Neil's music: in his awful last album for Reprise, Reactor, and obviously Trans. But the latter was a rather pointed way to analyze and put into metaphor Young's family situation. As he said, Trans was a fantasy about robot nurses in a hospital getting a young boy to push a button to communicate, parallelling Young's attempt to rewire one of his electric train systems in his house to communicate with the non-verbal Ben, who could imitate his father's movements via a self-constructed headset. 

While his family situation gave the album its thematic background, the sound was equally appropriate. The robotic, relentless beats from the sequencer mimicked the long, arduous therapy sessions, and Young's new love for synclavier and vocoder led him even further down the rabbit hole of how people are able to communicate. The vocoder makes the lyrics often difficult to grasp, and sometimes impossible to make out (as on parts of "Transformer Man"), but maybe therein lay a message as well: Human connection can transcend words, and maybe electric connection can as well. The idea of communicating with his son via robots and their sounds are at the core of Trans and at the core of "Transformer Man" - but at its heart lies a very human realizaton: The words don't matter, if the sound of them comes out right. And you can hear Young's love and encouragement for Ben in "Transformer Man", despite the lyrics being grabled, maybe especially because their garbled, when he moves into his falsetto and the vocoder turns his words almost indistinguishable. As Young himself said: "On that record, you know I'm saying something, but you can't understand what it is. Well, that was the feeling I was getting from my son."

Old school Young fans were of course recoiling in horror, when the vocoder first comes in roughly a third into "Computer Age". But here's the thing: I'm not like most Young fans. I felt like the inclusion of three tracks that have nothing to do with the concept, thrown in more or less to fill up the album, was a huge misstep that undermined the fascinating and - in its own weird way - quite wonderful record. One thing that was almost always missing, even from some of Neil's most popular albums, was cohesion. Uncle Neil simply never had much use for it. Need to fill an album up to album running time? Just throw in a couple of refurnished (or not) outtakes, or a live track or two, or whatever else was lying around. Even Harvest, the Young classic that even people who don't know much about Young have at home, was hardly a paragon of cohesion: In between the two heavily orchestrated numbers, the live track, and the one rock workout coming at the end of a predominantly acoustic album, cohesion wasn't the name of the game - one reason why I reworked it as Harvest Time, still the most popular album in One Buck Records history. 

So while most Neil Young fans would probably clamor for less vocoders and sequencers, not more of them, but our One Buck Record of the day is going the opposite way, bullheaded like Uncle Neil himself.  This version of Trans is not for folks who didn't like its sound in the first place, instead it doubles down on it and presents an album that stays with Young's concept from beginning to end, thus it's nicknamed the fully automated version. The three conventional tracks sung in Young's normal voice stick out like a sore thumb on the original Trans, especially "Litte Thing Called Love" and "Hold On To Your Love", both taken from another planned album completely (for years thought to be called Islands In The Sun, though on Archives III Young names it as Johnny's Island). And the concluding epic "Like An Inca" seems to be an entirely different thing together, unfortuately a deathly dull ramble stuck to a relentless synth beat, and thus never able to break out into hidden Young classic territory. So those three had to go (or almost). There are no Trans outtakes of any kind on Volume Three of his Archives, so it stands to reason that the six electro-and-vocoder tracks (counting the mix'n'match remake of "Mr. Soul") are all that exists of electronic Trans music. Which of course made building an entire electronic Trans retroactively somewhat challenging.

Challenging isn't impossible, though. I first thought of having some sort of little overture for the album that inroduced its sound and vision. So I looped the first bars of the 12" version of "Sample And Hold" and overlaid Young repeating the album title in a robotic vocoder voice, thus creating "Trans", the track, a short intro before the familiar beat of "Computer Age" takes over. Then I had to decide which version of "Sample And Hold" to use, the five-minute original album version or the eight-minute 12" cut. And guess what, I kept both. If there can be two "My My, Hey Hey"'s and two "Rockin' In The Free World"'s, then why the hell not two "Sample And Hold"'s? Especially since the feel and sound of both versions are quite different. Interestingly, the most guitar-heavy number on the entire album, the short version of "Sample And Hold" is co-credited to The Trans Band and not Crazy Horse, who are co-credited on the thumping "We R In Control" (whose little 'woo-woo-woo sound' I love) and "Computer Cowboy", the most humorous track on the album, and also one of my favorites. The eight-minute 12" version of "Sample And Hold"is significantly different, almost entirely electronic, with the guitars pushed further back in the mix, with additional lyrics and vocoder interplay. I figured both versions were different enough from each other to merit inclusion. Needless to say, it was also a cheap way to fill out the album to reach an acceptable album running time. I'm borrowing Uncle Nel's tricks!

I still thought that that was a little thin as far as the track list goes, so I decided to rescue one of the thrown off tracks - and tried to, well, transform it. I ran "Hold On To Your Love" through the vocoder to bring it closer in sound to its Trans colleagues. Granted, it's didn't come out a hundred percent how I wanted - for that I probably would have had to separate the vocals from the rest, then put the vodocer on it, but that starts to be outside of my capabilities, especially since I never got to working well with the AV5 audio editing program and finally abandoned it. This version of the track is thus an experiment that maybe isn't perfect, but it more or less does what I wanted it to. It brings the fully automated version of Trans to a 36 minute run time and now carries nine tracks, which makes it an authentic-enough looking simile of what the album could have also looked like in late 1982 or early 1983. 

So, this is obviously a way tougher sell than Harvest Time, but hell, a challenge's a challenge, right? So, be a pal (or a girl pal), and try out the fully electronic Trans experience. It might not transform your opinion of this most misunderstood album of Young's career, but you never know...

You Are Hereby Cordially Invited To Attend The Butterfly Ball

Some of the more obscure albums to feature here on One Buck Records I stumble onto by accident - following an artist or type of music by a thread. Some I find lthe old-fashioned way ike you would find here - on blogs, in articles, in user comments. And some albums I stumble onto, well, just like that. Take The Butterfly Ball by Roger Glower & Friends. Had never heard of the thing, had never heard a thing from it. Then, one day riding in the car, "Love Is All" came on the radio - and I'm pretty sure it's only a radio song over here in France - and my wife said something like "Mais c'est le chanson de la grenouille!". The frog song? What the hell? (Cheap joke: If it's running on French radio, doesn't it automatically turn into a frog song?) It turns out when something goes wrong on live television on French national TV, they - and we're talking about the late Seventies and early Eighties here - they didn't put up a test screen or some sort of sign apologizing for the incident, no the French had something much better, they had la grenouille who sang "Love Is All". They had this: 

So, my wife knew the singing frog, but not necessarily any other critters that make up the cast of The Butterfly Ball, or indeed that very event or musical album. And so I got her The Butterfly's Ball for an upcoming birtday. This album is - very Seventies. It could probably have come out only at that time, and definitely only in Great Britain. There is this very specifically British type of whimsy that drives the project that seems impossible to imitate. I mean the idea itself sounds sufficiently daft: Making an album out of a children's book of drawings. Alan Aldridge's The Butterfly Ball And The Grasshopper's Feast had some accompanying verse by poet William Plomer (who died before publication), but Glover - free from obligations in Deep Purple and just at the start of his career as a producer - was tasked to bring the tale into a musical form. 

Glover wrote the whole album - some co-written with Eddie Hardin, as well as with Ronnie James Dio and Mickey Lee Soule - , played a varoiety of instruments on the recording, including guitar, piano, bass, and percussion. And while he contributed some backing vocals, for lead vocal duty he went through his roloscope and found a ton of help. The three aforementioned collaborators take leads, as well as new Deep Purple members David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, and a couple of others. On the female side of things, we get his wife Judi Kuhl, Helen Chapelle and Liza Strike. And of course we're going out, fittingly, with a children's choir.

While the album is a work that is supposed to work as a whole, but the obvious highlight here is the aforementioned "Love Is All", obviously influenced by the Beatles "All You Need Is Love", a happy singalong that was the first song finished for the project. Though credited to Glover & Friends on the single, lead vocals are by Ronnie James Dio. The track made number one in the Netherlands and Belgium and, as explained above, became very popular in France during fill-ins, the became a full-fledged smash on rerelease in 1991 after it was featured in an ad. Other highlights include the folk-ish "Sitting In A Dream", delicately sung by Dio, and the rollicking "Sir Maximus Mouse", sung by Eddie Hardin. This is the complete version of the album, including "Little Chalk Blue" with lead vocals by Urias Heep's John Lawton, which was issued ten months after the album to promote the concert of The Butterfly Ball that finally took place in December 1975. 

So, this is a true oddball little thing, with more than a touch of British music hall shining through here and there in this 'rock opera', which is not that surprising considering such song titles as "Saffron Dormouse And Lizzy Bee", "Old Blind Mole", "Dreams Of Sir Bedivere" and "Watch Out For The Bat". But then again, you're not coming here for mainstream stuff, do ya? So, get in touch with your inner child, join the animals of the forest in their preparation for the titular event and let yourself get carried away to the land of the silly and the whimsical, the land of The Butterfly Ball. 

The Year Of The Desperado

The Year Of The Desperado, at least for the purposes of the One Buck Record of the day, started in early March 1973 and ended about thirteen months later. On March 10 1973 the Eagles took the stage of the Sporthal de Vliegermolen, a local gym in Voorburg in the Netherlands for a festival called Popgala 73. At that time the release of Desperado was two weeks away, which means that the Eagles premiered a whooping five numbers from the album that evening, plus J.D. Souther's "How Long" which would only find a place on an Eagles record 34 years later. Ten days later they gave a concert for the BBC that split the difference bewteen numbers from their succesful debut album and the upcoming Desperado. And then, a little less than a year later, on April 14 1974 the Eagles were invited to Don Kirshner's Rockconcert series, bringing with them friends like Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt. By that time, On The Border had come out, but a nuber of Desperado tracks remained in the line-up, including a show-stopping and show-concluding extended run through "Doolin-Dalton - Desperado (Reprise)".  

So here's the breakdown: the first eight tracks are from Popgala '73, the following four from the BBC cncert and then the last four from the Kirshner show. Most of these 15 tracks present Desperado songs, plus songs that fit the vibe or sound. The Popgala tracks are interesting, because while the soundboard mix is pretty clear, it also is an unusual mix. Don Henley's instruments are much higher in the mix than usual, giving these tracks a sound that goes off the beaten Eagles path. And for a band that was notorious for playing everything exactly as in the studio, that's is something. You can hear Henley's drumming or percussion work. This might not be surprising for the opening "Take It Easy" (after the traditional a capella rendering of the first verse of "Fair And Tender Ladies") which is acoustic and has Henley do percussion on the guitar on his lap. But it gives even an old warhorse like "Peaceful Easy Feeling" a slightly different feeling, Henley's pushed to the front drumming and the rather loose steel guitar from Leadon giving it a loping feel that the pretty, shiny studio version and most of its live apperance clones don't have. And you can hear every movement of Henley's hi-hat at the beginning of "Certain Kind Of Fool". 

Speaking of that song, one of my favorites of the album, it's the only one on here that is present in two versions, because I thought the Popgala and BBC ones were sufficiently different and both worth keeping, while I picked the BBC versions of "(Whatever Happened To) Saturday Night" and "Out Of Control" because the former has a longer mandolin solo and the latter has cleaner sound. "Early Bird" from that BBC concert is an interesting case to make for the early Eagles being a band worth seeing and hearing in concert. From about mid-1974 onwards, their concerts became calcified and repetitive, no doubt responsible for the Rolling Stone infamously accusing them of "loitering on stage". But in the two years beforehand they occasionally deviated from the well-studied studio versions, such as on "Early Bird" whose running time gets more than doubled via a long jam section. 

I also kept the banter on the Popgala tracks, because it's interesting to see how the Eagles (d)evolved. Some of the interaction might be akward, especially when Glenn Frey takes the mic, but at least they try to communicate with the audience, when in later years they would pretty much leave it at "We're the Eagles from Los Angeles. It's also interesting to note who's doing the banter here. It's normal that you don't hear the terminally shy Randy Meisner, but there also is not a single peep from Henley, with Leadon and Frey - the band's two most outgoing characters, taking the mic (and sometimes sniping at each other, setting up a volatile relationship that would eventually become openly hostile). 

The Year Of The Desperado doesn't only make a case for the quality of the Desperado material but also for the quality of the early Eagles as a fine concert attraction, and it's a very fine way to spend an hour and change. So, here's the Eagles from Los Angeles with tales of outlaws and low lives or maybe low life rockstars. Let The Year Of The Desperado begin...

When The Eagles Turned Desperado...And Unveiled Their Masterpiece

"They've made a fuckin' cowboy album!" This was the less-than-enthusiastic reaction of Atlantic label boss Jerry Greenberg, whose lbel was distributing Assylum records at the time, upon hearing what the new golden boys of the Asylum label had been up to for about a month in London. He certainly didn't expect an entire album based on old West outlaws and their similarities to current rock stars. Asylum head honcho David Geffen was barely more impressed. Of course, one issue was coolness. Looking like hippies on their first album, he could sell this music to hippies and housewives alike, but now these guys were playing dress up on the cover material and singing about bank robbers in the 1880s? History almost proved Greenberg, who maintained that coboy records wouldn't sell, and Geffen right, at least at first, because Desperado didn't repeat the success of the Eagles' debut album. Both singles stiffed (more on that later) and the album took a year and a half to go gold. Was it a mistake to make that "fuckin' cowboy album"?  

I had a real 'two roads diverged in a yellow wood' moment when I picked up my first Eagles album. My record store (well, one of my record stores) had a 'cheaper and last items' section which I browsed through, as usual. This was at the beginning of my life as a student and thus at the beginning of me slowly building a classic rock collection. So I stumbled on two Eagles discs, probably thrown out to make way for the remasters that were coming up. One was The Long Run. The other one was, obviously, Desperado. I decided I could take one, but not both. On one hand we had the simple black album cover, on the other the old west outlaws. 

I'd like to think that my love for Westerns, instilled to me by my father's love for Westerns made me choose Desperado and its cowboy chic, but it's just as likely that I checked the back covers and the titles on The Long Run made me wonder. "The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks"? "Teenage Jail"? "Those Shoes"? Yeah, no, I take the cowboys there, thank you very much. Needless to say, I made the good choice. I doubt I would have become an Eagles fan based on The Long Road, as a matter of fact. It's still the worst of all Eagles albums and probably the worst of all the big, heavily awaited releases ever. Yuck. Desperado, though? Hear me out on this, folks, because it just might be the Eagles' masterpiece. 

There's a persistent myth about the Eagles, often brought up in connection with Desperado and its artwork, that the Eagles weren't really country, that they were a bunch of fakers who would do this ridiculous dress-up but were, as Michael Murphy would say, "city slicker lickers, they gotta a lot of licks slicker than you and me". But that is, as a lot of things concerning the band, a mix of self-mythologizing gone wrong and a lot of half-assed assumptions by observers. "We're the Eagles from Los Angeles" might have been their slogan, but the Eagles came from everywhere in the U.S. 

Randall Herman Meisner was born the son of a sharecropper in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. You can't get any more country than that. Donald Hugh Henley grew up in a small town in northeast Texas. Sounds pretty country to me. Bernard Michael Leadon III was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, though he was the frst to adop California as his home state. The only real faker of the crew was, of course, Glenn Frey, who was born and grew up in Detroit and idolized local hero Bob Seger. Frey, notably, went into sensitive folk-rock, then country-rock, because he saw a career opportunity there. But yeah, I'd say two and a half cowboys out of four is pretty damn enough. 

Whether you agreed with the album's premise of likening 1970s rock stars to 1880 outlaws, or thought it was silly, you can not accuse the Eagles of not committing to it. I never realized until some Glenn Frey banter in a live show, how smartly they go about it. Take "A Certain Kind Of Fool" for example. Listening to it like that, with the Wild West artwork and everything, you would of course figure it's about a young guy buying a gun, becoming a gunfighter and "a wanted man" on the poster on a store front - but it never openly says that the object, "so shiny and new in his hand", was a gun - it might just as well be a guitar, and the poster is a concert poster.

This kind of double meaning applies to a whole number of songs: When Bernie Leadon sings in "Twenty-One" that "they say a man should have a stock and trade / but me I find another way", is he talking abut turning outlaw or turning rock'n'roll singer? The guys coming into town and causing havoc while getting a little "Out Of Control" could be cowhands raising hell after their payday, or a rock'n'roll band partying, right?! The old, short (and now replaced) Allmusic review complained that "none of the songs fit the storyline", but there was no storyline per se to follow - and they did almost entirely follow the thematic concept of the record.  

Desperado was also the big coming out party for Don Henley and a harbinger for things to come, with all that implies. On the debut he was hardly noticable, as a singer or songwriter. He had half a song credit to his name, even if - another harbnger to come - it was on hit sngle "Witchy Woman" that he also sung. But for his second slated lead vocal they had to wheel out a Jackson Browne tune, as if Henley couldn't write a second quality tune. Well, that would change, quickly. Henley is credited on eight of the eleven songs on Desperado, and sings lead on four of them - most of all Eagles in both cases. And while the Henley-Frey combo might not be as renowned as Lennon-McCartney or Richards-Jagger, that writing team was born here, and there is no denying its efficacity. Unsurprisingy, the two big songs that everyone knows off this album were both Henley-Frey compositions. Tellingly, these weren't the two singles off the album, because "Desperado" was never issued as such. 

More proof that, despite "Witchy Woman", the Eagles were at this time seen as a band with a clear lead singer in Glenn Frey, so Asylum would ty to mirror the band's debut album and issue a Frey-sung uptempo tune à la "Take It Easy" ("Outlaw Man") and a Frey-sung ballad à la "Peaceful, Easy Feeling" ("Tequila Sunrise"). Also: check out the album cover, on which the two most prominent guys are Leadon and Meisner, with Frey half-blocked out by Meisner and Henley having half of his face hidden by the shadow of his cowboy hat. This would obviously be the last time that Henley would be obscured on something Eagles-related. Henley seemingly had the greatest affinity for the cowboy material, yet it's still quite a leap to go from a single co-credit on the debut to co-writing two-thirds of an album. Naturally, Henley profited from this, as his songwriting credits, number of lead vocals and influence on the group's fortune grew massively, almost as a direct result from Desperado. 

On the nine original tracks (not couting the two "Doolin-Dalton" reprise songs), I don't see a single duffer. The weakest is probably "Out Of Control", and even that one hints at the harder rock direction the band would soon afterwards veer into. Despite Glyn Johns' excellent work on Desperado the band - well, mainly Glenn Frey and Don Henley - were growing tired of Johns and his rules (no drugs in the studio! how dare he?) and production (deemed too soft by the two), but the switch to Bill Szymchyk halfway through follow-up On The Border didn't yield an album as satisfying as Desperado. As a matter of fact, none of them did. Sure, they got bigger and ridiculously successful, but for me they never bettered Desperado, even on Hotel California which comes closest. 

Desperado deserves a listen from those who never gave a fuck about the Eagles, or a second listen from those who have written off the Eagles due to the played-to-death-radio-hits. It will also be the first of a series of albums about America in the 19th Century that I plan to post. And be back tomorrow for a Desperado-themed bonus...