Get in the spirit of '76 with Spirit (slimmed down edition)

There are two distinct bands that are Spirit (well, three at least, but bear with me here), in the same way that there are two different,distinct eras of Spirit. There was Spirit, the original band, from 1967 to 1971, a tight, concise ensemble built around the talents of guitar player and lead singer Randy California, but also Jay Ferguson's on vocals and persussion, and the contributions of John Locke on keyboards and the solid rhythm section of bass man Mark Andes and California's stepdad Ed Cassidy on drums. That group came to a grinding halt when California accused Ferguson and Andes of plotting to take the group away from him, with both then quitting to form Jo Jo Gunne.  

And then there is Spirit Mark II, which is the band that named itself Spirit from about 1974 onwards. Spirit Mark II was a curious band, not only because it was Randy California and his stepdad plus whoever was available. (We're just gonna skip the weird 1971 - 1973 intermezzo, where the band was without California and led by the Staehely brothers). Spirit Mark II was, arguably a weaker band then the original, yet in many ways I find them more interesting, and they are definitely more interesting for the purposes of One Buck Records. 

The trademark of Spirit Mark II is its shambolic nature, a band built around whatever whims Randy California was having at any time. Sprit Mark II was the band that figured that having a couple of unfinished guitar noodles and some Star Trek dialogue run through a vocoder would suffice to make an album (narrator: it did not). Randy California was a bit like his idol Jimmy Hendrix, obsessively recording himself. In Spirit Mark II, California would often just take whatever little guitar doodles he had lying around and put them to use. Sometimes he would turn them into complete, structured or relatively structured songs, and often he would not. 

The 'found object, anything goes' esthetic of Spirit Mark II means that that part of Spirit's career is perfect for alternate album explorations, a specialty here at One Buck Records. Since the work is so shambolic and seemingly random, it feels much more justified to de- and reconstruct, or in some cases to construct from the ton of outtakes California & Co. left behind. In what for the moment is planned as a series of four alternate Spirit albums, we start with something deceptively simple: Trying to turn Spirit's sprawling, full of detours extravaganza Spirit of '76 into a single album. Deceptively simple because when I tried to actually do it, some tough cuts had to be made. But I think I ultimately suceeded in trimming down the wealth of material into a relative coherent single album statement.  

Speaking of wealth of material. Most of the material on Spirit of '76 (and the one ending up on follow-up Son Of Spirit) was written 'on spec', with Spirit renting out Studio 10 in Tampa to put as much material on tape as possible. This material got them their record deal with Mercury Records, but it also announced how Spirit Mark II would operate. The inspired and the weird, the constructed and the unfinished, sitting side by side in what would become the band's de facto method of operation. 

I wanted to keep most of the album's covers - in the context of the album it sounds like California compiling the New American Songbook: Dylan, of course, as a pillar, but also a foundational piece like "Walking The Dog", a new folk standard popularized by his idol Jimi Hendrix ("Hey Joe") and a nod to the Rolling Stones ("Happy"). That's a pretty good new songbook to my ears. California's own compositions show plenty of his spacey, echoey guitar on languid numbers like "Lady Of The Lakes" or his trip to "Urantia", the run-out groove of this single album's side one as it were, while he really wheels out heavy guitar playing on "Walking The Dog", his fantastic nine minute version of "Like A Rolling Stone" (which starts slowly and calmly, then builds up a head of steam) or "Victim Of Society". That track was somewhat of a headache for me, as it's a relatively generic rocker, so I long debated leaving it off this single album version but finally decided to keep it.  

Spirit themselves placed the bookends perfectly, recalling the upcoming Bicentennial celebrations of the nation, with their "America The Beautiful/The Times They Are A-Changing" medley to start and "The Star-Spangled Banner" (plus a snatch of "Times") to end the album, so that would obviously stay. But I still wanted to program the album as, at least partly a personal journey of personal enlightenment, so it builds to the double climax of "My Road" and "Thank You Lord", two songs that mirror and answer each other, before the entirely reconstructed and funky (when has that song ever been accused of that?!) "Star-Spangled Banner", in another nod to idol and mentor Hendrix, finishes things. 

So, Spirit of '76 as a concentrated shot of rock'n'roll, 49 minutes just squeezing under the upper limits of vinyl records of the time. I think it works rather splendidly like this. I hope you get into the, uh, spirit of this, and agree...

 

The Hollies go Americana, again! On a boat!

Warren Zevon might be the original excitable boy, but sometimes I'm a bit of that, too. I have a very vague plan of what I want to post, but then I get excited about a new project or distracted or what have you, and the original plan fades into the background. Case in point: When I posted The Hollies' Romany back in January I announced that it was part one of a two-part project and had planned to post the follow-up, an alternate album that wraps up the Mikael Ricksford era of the band, a week or two after. I even mentioned that this will "show up soon". Whoops. It's now more than two months, so I guess time to be true to my word. Better late than never. 

As I said in my write-up for Romany, I consider that album to be the best Hollies album, because it is the most consistent in tone, and it has a number of really good songs and no bad ones. I also mentioned that one of the problems of the Hollies' other albums was their unfortunate tendency to always have a number of cheesy showbiz tunes on their albums. And the tail end of the short-lived Rickfors tenure didn't excape that, either, even if that era was mostly a well-kept secret. The Hollies did issue another record, Out On The Road, but for some reason, it was only ever released in Germany, making it an instant collector's item for Hollies fans beyond the rhine. And, as said, there were a couple of duffers on that one as well, nothing horrible, but still...

So, what is then The Last Wind? As you might have imagined, an attempt to make a better second Rickford-era album, one that can proudly stand beside Romany as a great double feature. Most of the hallmarks of that album, notably a slight Americana sound no doubt influenced by the presence of Rickfors, are also here, accentuated by the three outtakes/b-sides from Romany I added to replace the weaker Out On The Road numbers. 

There are more guitars than you might imagine, and they are spacier and - dare I say more psychedelic - than you would expect from this edition of The Hollies. There's some harmonica. And when the band wants, they can sound heavy, as on their more than credible cover of the Eagles' "Witchy Woman". Before being let go, Rickfors left on a high note, contributing three very good numbers to proceedings here, including the new title track "The Last Wind". The Tony Hicks/Kenny Lynch duo are no slouches either, contributing the very good new opener "Go Down, Slow Down" and "A Better Place" (which lands just on the right side of the cheese line), while Terry Sylvester contributes the bittersweet "Mr. Heartbreaker" and the slightly psychedelic "Pick Up The Pieces". Unlike Romany, The Last Wind is a real teamwork and authored by the group, with the only outside contributions being another Colin Horton-Jennings track and the Eagles number. 

So, hiss the main sails, seamen, time to go on board with the Hollies. I gurantee you won't feel shanghai'd, so let yourself travel with The Last Wind...

More drastic measures are needed...

 ...or so it seems, after the last round of the Best Album Eliminator is up for more than a week and has gathered a grand total of one (1) vote (thanks, Greg!). But, seriously, folks. I know you are curious because about two dozens of you clicked on the blog post, yet no one else wanted to post a vote? So, do you really want me and the Gregster to battle out album supremacy all by ourselves?

I was always pretty bad at math, but I use my math lizard brain to figure out a simple lizard brain formula, like 'nice pair of tits > rotten green zombie arm'. So, you get the cheese cake, I get the eye balls back on the Eliminator, and this time no dropping the ball, eye or otherwise, I want some votes in, dammit!

The Velvet Underground & Nico  -  Nevermind 

Revolver - Blood On The Tracks

Sticky Fingers -  Abbey Road

Automatic For The People - Who's Next

So, these are the match-ups. You vote for your favorite between the two of them. Yes, it really is that simple! And now, get to it, before that nice lady up there puts yer lights out...(eben if that's what some of you might hope for...pervs!)

Et bien encore une autre coté de Madame Workman...

As promised, Nanette Workman, Part II, for a groovy Sunday afternoon. As in, really groovy. Because Lady Marmalade, the One Buck Record of the day is Nanette in up-tempo, groovy, funky mood. I mentioned in my write-up yesterday that Workman issued a couple of French-language record with an eye on the burgoning disco market, and this is one of them. But, unlike the self-titled follow-up, Lady Marmalade isn't a shameless disco platter, but rather a mix between rock and funk, much harder edged and thus more enjoyable than the albums people usually issued to profit from the rising popularity of disco. It seems Workman issued two albums with identical artwork, a French and an English one. I could only find the former, but judging from the one English track I found (attached as a bonus track), the songs aren't the same. 

From the saucy artwork on, Nanette lays on the sexy, sultry shtick really thick, Gitchie Gitchie Ya-Ya Da-Da, indeed. But it works. I'm normally not a fan of records that want to sound sexy, but Lady Marmalade is a pretty good exception to the rule. Mainly, because it rocks, hard. The heavy rock direction on one half of yesterday's One Buck Record didn't come out of nowhere, the instrumentation here is pretty muscular, while keeping the funkiness that this kind of platter needs.

                                                   Gitchie Gitchie Ya-Ya Da-Da!

The emblematic "Danser, Danser" is an absolute banger, as the youth of today would say, and so is "Pas Fou", which brings up some groovy guitar work.The 'come to Mama' stylings of opener "Baby Boom" sets the atmosphere nicely for Nanette's sultry Madame persona (and isn't it interesting that she then wrote the song "Madame" for Grits And Cornbread?), and she isn't exactly subtle about her intentions on the relentless, harmonica-driven "Lache Moi": "Je me vois déjà dans ton lit!" Woof, is it me ou il fait chaud ici? "Super Lady" is two minutes and forty-three seconds of supercharged rock'n'roll and appreciable, even the slower, softer songs aren't too slow or too soft. 

So, with this you're pretty nicely set up with Madame Workman. No matter what mood you find yourself in - country, rock, funk - Nanette has something for you. So get groovy, get heavy, get country-fried...Madame Workman et le mec à un sou s'occupent de vous...

Miss Workman and Madame Nanette: The Two Sides Of Nanette Workman

Nanette Workman had sort of a strange career. She moved around a lot, hung out with Rock'n'Roll royalty, became a semi-star in French-speaking territories, but never truly became a household name worldwide. In some ways, her wayfaring career mirrors her upbringing. Born to a pair of musicians - he the trumpet player in Tommy Dorsett's ochestra, she a music hall and opera singer - in the Bronx, Workman was subsequently raised in the deep south in Jackson, Mississippi, something that will come abandonly into play on Grits And Cornbread, our One Buck Record of the day. But her career didn't really get going from Jackson or any other place down south. She had to move way up north, all the way to Quebec, after a short stint on Broadway. She met Antoine D'Amrosio a.k.a. Tony Roman, a Quebecois singer turned music impressario with his own record label, wo pushed Workman to sing in French, resulting in a no. 1 single with her take on Gilbert Bécaud's "Et Maintenant". 

After two years of local success in music and television, usually alongside Roman, Workman then moved to England, accompanying Dudley Moore and Peter Cook on tv comedy show Not Only...But Also. She also stayed in music, lending her voice for backup vocals on tons of classic records, among them The Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" and John Lennon's "Power To The People". A first English-language album in 1970 solo album went nowhere. Workman found more success by going back to French, installing herself in France and becoming involved with 'the French Elvis' Johnny Halliday both professionally (as his backup singer) and then personally (well...). From there she made a couple of funk/disco-flavored records in French before finally releasing her second English-language album, Grits and Cornbread. 

I stumbled on this record totally unwittingly, presumably like about 80% of people who listened to it, at least those who did any time after 1978 or so. And that is because Grits And Cornbread is one of the most popular (as in: replicated several times over) grey market releases. I would've thought that it's probably one of those instances were the copyright expired and the label not paying attention, thus falling into public domain (at least temporarily), allowing dozens of grey market and bootleg-based "labels" to pick this up. (The most high-profile fuck-up of this kind I've ever seen is Atlantic Records with Crosby & Nash's Wind On The Water, which I picked up on a ridiculously cheap-looking grey market release.) 

But the first variant, a tax scam label release showed up not even a year after the original release, so I imagine it was a case of the copyright not being declared correctly in the first place. And of course it wasn't released as anything having to do with Nanette Workman. The whole thing was marketed as a Peter Frampton release! To add insult to injury, the last two songs were lopped off for some reason. My (somewhat later CD) version at least had the decency to add "& Friends" to Frampton's name to indicate that some songs might have lead vocals from other artists (Spoiler: they all do). It's still a total scam, of course. The above-mentioned tax scam record credited this to 'Peter Frampton & The Heavy Metal Boys' which...is really false advertising.  

Now, look at that beautiful artwork! Oh hey, Nanette is even mentioned! As a bit player! Bravo, tax scam record...

Other than Frampton, Workman called in lots of friends in high places for this one. Ex-lover Johnny Hallyday (together with his manager/mentor/'fake dad' Les Hallyday) produced the whole thing, and the band besides Frampton isn't made up of total scrubs either: Bass is handled by Andy Bown from Status Quo, drums by Mike Kelli (Spooky Tooth). Fellow Rolling Stones alumni Jim Price and Bobby Keys on trumpet and sax bring their sound to Nanette's version of "Loving Cup", which does sound as if it could've come straight from Exile On Main Street. 

The homely kitchen with home-coooked meal (plus cat) on the cover is slightly deceiving. Workman didn't seem entirely sure which way to go for this album, so she split the difference and made half of a rock - even verging on hard rock - record and half of a country-ish album. But the original album configuration wasn't an album of halves, both types of tracks were alternating, giving the listener a bit of a whiplash. Which is why this slightly reworked version of Grits And Cornbread does what maybe should have happened in 1977. It splits the album up into a rock ("grits") and country ("cornbread") side, the way a number of albums around that time had a 'fast' and a 'slow' side. The album also has two longer cuts with long run-out grooves ("Love Taker" and "Madame", respectively) so it felt only natural to use these as the side closing numbers. 

Miss Workman shows some real grit (pun indeed intended) on these songs, shouting her way through the heavier numbers with abandon and bringing a Southern sensibility to the way she sings the title song and "Goin' Home". The sentimental "Billy" is to be taken quite literally - an ode to the childhood spent with her brother, who incidentally is also a musician and wrote album opener "There's A Man". 

Grits And Cornbread is a very fine slab of 70s album rock, satisfying both rock and country/folk listeners. In other words, both sides of me! And hopefully of you...

So give Grits And Cornbread a spin, and since it's the weekend, we celebrate with a double shot of Nanette. If you like this, be back tomorrow for some more Nanette, mais cette fois en français! Ca va être chaud! Oh là là...

Ruckus At The Movies: Cheap Trick

You know what's been missing around here lately? Some good ol' fashioned rock'n'roll, that's what! Amid my love for all things Americana, I sometimes forget to mix in something a little more...crunchy. Et voilà, a new series to remedy that (I know, throw it on the pile...). So, what's Ruckus At The Movies? It'll be a bunch of compilations of harder rock acts and the music they contributed to movie soundtracks. And what better band to start off shenanigans than that ultracrunchy quartet from Rockford, Illinois - the one and only Cheap Trick. 

Cheap Trick are the ultimate smart dumb rock'n'roll band. They also seem to be perpetually underrated. No one ever seems to go "Hey, those Cheap Trick fellas were pretty damn good, right?". Or: "That Rick Nielsen sure knew how to write some deceptively clever seemingly dumb songs". Or: "Boy, that Robin Zander really was quite a singer, wasn't he?". All of these things go without saying, but the fact that Cheap Trick were seen as a dumb rock'n'roll band seems to have prevented them from having some cred with the cool crowd. Other than...uh, Billy Corgan, where are the rock'n'roll stars singing the praises of the Trick? 

Arguably, most of the tracks on this compilation come from when the band was on a bit of a downswing, meaning from the early 80s on. Trying to find a sympathetic producer after having separated from Tom Werman, as well as a hit record, the Trick went from George Martin to Roy Thomas Baker to Todd Rundgren to Jack Douglas to Tony Platt, the latter messing up the band's sound on Standing On The Edge and especially The Doctor. The Richie Zito-produced Lap Of Luxury brought them their only no. 1 hit, power ballad "The Flame" before follow-up Busted, well, busted whatever commercial standing they had.

                                           The dreamboats and, uh, the other guys

All the while Cheap Trick maintained income and visibility by placing songs on soundtracks, from genre exercises like Heavy Metal and Rock And Rule (for which they recorded three songs, both outtakes are also included) to mainstream fare like Caddyshack II (for which they recorded a stomping cover of "Money (That's What I Want)") or the forgotten Brendan Fraser-comedy Encino Man (for which they recorded an even more rowdy - and heavy - cover of "Wild Thing"). I also threw in two solo tracks by Robin Zander, big AOR ballads for the Sly Stallone-vehicle Over The Top and the Kurt Russel-Mel Gibson joint Tequila Sunrise. The latter features Ann Wilson.  

One of my favorite Trick tracks from this comp is a pure "gun for hire"-work. Harold Faltermeyer, who worked on the scores and songs for Top Gun got them to perform "Mighty Wings" which is also prominently featured in the film. And yet the single missed the charts completely, whereas even Loverboy's soppy "Heaven In Your Eyes" made it all the way to no. 12. Oh well. Opener "Everything Works If You Let It" (from Roadie) and "Up The Creek" from the movie of the same title (which the band incidentally hates and describes as possibly their worst song) at least scraped into the Top 50. 

But hey, charts, shmarts, right?! If you wanted some big dumb fun rock'n'roll on your movie soundtrack, you should call Cheap Trick and they would get the job done. The 17 tracks featured here are the proof. So, hang up your brain for a while, get warmed up for some air guitar and let's cause some ruckus at the movies... 

Uncle Neil's Trip Back To The Country

It's been a while that I posted something by Uncle Neil. My re-imagining of Neil Young's classic Harvest as Harvest Time was one of the more popular posts in the early days, the first to creep over a hundred hits. Yay Neil! The old warhorses always sell, even for free! So, time to check back in with Uncle Neil, circa 15 years later for another album that wasn't but could have been...

Making alternate Neil Young albums seems like a singularly fitting activity because a bunch of Young's albums are kinda sorta alternate albums anyway, considering that there are probably a dozen or more unreleased, rejected or withdrawn projects in Uncle Neil's drawers, and that he was never afraid to mix and match stuff from his extensive archive with new recordings. This also means that no Young project or song can be safely placed in the dust bin of Young's musical history because you'll never know when Unce Neil decides to pull out an old, slightly ratty tune, dust it off and put it on an album anyway. Case in point: "Wonderin'", first played in the early 70s as one of his hokey country tunes, but never put on an album, only to emerge an entire decade later as a hokey doo wop tune on Young's rockabilly abomination Everybody's Rockin'. That 24-minute abomination was of course Young's knee-jerk reaction to troubles with Geffen Records who had rejected an earlier album called Old Ways, that didn't resemble the finally released all-country all-the way Old Ways. The original Old Ways was half old-school rockabilly, half old-school country. Which, in a roundabout way brings us to our One Buck Record of the day. 

Neil Young's headlong plunge into straight up country music in the early-to mid-80s was of course preceded by numerous forays into the genre, notably on American Stars'n'Bars and Hawks And Doves. But really, Harvest already dipped into it, and once Young had a foot in the genre he never really left. His early 1980s shenanigans - openly embracing Reaganomics, offering the weird electro record Trans, getting invested in the fate of farmers and Farm Aid - showed again how mercurial and unpredictable Young could be, so how exactly David Geffen could be surprised by what he bought and almost immediately have buyer's remorse is a problem of appreciating his asset. Geffen thought he would get the Harvest hitmaker - not...well...Young, the guy who had always marched to his own drum. 

You probably all know already the details of Young's turbulent tenure at Geffen records (Getting sued for making uncharacteristic music with Trans, subsequently threatening to play only country music until the end of his stay with Geffen), so let's skip ahead a couple of years. Old Ways (version two) has come and gone, Young has gone out with a group dubbed The International Harvesters, Geffen has dropped their lawsuit and gotten a weird, pretty bad synth-rock record (Landing On Water) out of it, while Young was prepping and altering live performances from a tour with Crazy Horse from the year before to publish as Life, his last album for Geffen. But while he was fully back in guitar rock with Crazy Horse, country still wasn't entirely out of his system. So he went into the studio and cut a couple of country tracks, some of them already roadtested with The International Harvesters in 1985. Like a lot of other projects, these songs would get filed away and never see the light of day. "Beautiful Bluebird" got reworked as more of a folk-rock tune for Young's 'sequel' Chrome Dreams II in 2007, proving once again that no Young song is ever truly dead and gone, in terms of being issued or reworked for new purposes. "Nothing Is Perfect" and "Interstate" were prepared for a release on an EP supposed to support Farm Aid that never came out. In short, Young compiled a back log of country tunes that sat around unused and unissued.

Which brings us back to the record of the day: What if Young finally decides in the late-1980s to assemble all the straight country offerings that have fallen to the wayside in the years before? That's how we can end up with My Country, which gathers tracks he cut live with The International Harvesters (issued on the archival A Treaure) and an Old Ways outtake issued on the Geffen Years comp Lucky Thirteen and the above-mentioned outtakes from 1987 plus that beautiful first version of "Interstate" cut for that Farm Aid EP. 

Uncle Neil never much cared for coherence, but the One Buck Guy does, so the work from the Old Ways era, including the lovely tribute to his then-new born daughter "Amber Jean", will take up what would be side one of a vinyl album (tracks 1-5), whereas the 1987 material would fill up most of side two before ending with "Interstate", a perfect album closer. I tried to improve the sound quality of the 1987 demos a bit and - as with all my comps using different sources - volume EQ'd the whole thing for your listening pleasure. Cover photo by Jacob Legge, showing a lake close to Omemee, Ontario where Young spent his childhood. His country, indeed. 

On Harvest, Uncle Neil asked "Are You Ready For The Country?". On Old Ways, he proclaimed to "Get Back To The Country". So, are you all ready to go back to the country with Uncle Neil?