LINK: My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection

Screenshot 2014-03-18 17.09.21A wife decides for some reason (I haven’t gotten to the beginning yet to learn why) to listen to all the albums in her record fan husband’s record collection and “review” them in a Tumblr called My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection. Her style is kind of cute, kind of cloying, sometimes funny, like the picture here. I don’t have an opinion yet.

She’s just started reviewing the Bs, and that led to a review of the B52’s eponymous debut elpee. She’d never heard Dance This Mess Around and is suitably impressed.

Her husband sometimes makes comments. He’s clearly a cool guy who seems unphased by explaining why he has free jazz in his record collection. He also recommended this cover of Rock Lobster by deadhorse, which was never released on vinyl so it’s okay to listen on YouTube:

LINK: Physical Graffiti is 39 Years Old Today

Screenshot 2014-02-25 11.55.14On this day in 1975, Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti was released. The website Gothamist included it in their series NYC Album Art, which includes the album cover, a story about the album and other stuff that readers here might enjoy, including a YouTube playlist.

The Physical Graffiti entry in the series includes NY Times critic John Rockwell’s Top 10 list for 1975. He lists Zep’s big album as an honorable mention and points out in the intro that he likes new music, which is why his list is topped by a couple of youngsters, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith.

In Defense of Joe Jackson

Steve’s New Year’s article included a bunch of discs Mr. Moyer was considering blowing a bunch of holiday Amazon cash on.

looksharpAmong the coveted was Joe Jackson’s terrific 1979  Look Sharp, a solid and even pretty diverse debut released during the hey day of Punk and the New Wave.

At first I dismissed Jackson as an Elvis Costello wanna be, but several songs from Look Sharp really nailed me. Is She Really Going Out With Him, Sunday Papers, and One More Time not to mention the great title cut made me buy the vinyl (I got the same issue as Peter, two 10″ discs) and the album was strong enough for me to easily take the plunge with Jackson’s second album, I’m The Man.

I felt Jackson’s second work was even stronger than his first, with the title track resting among my favorite Jackson tunes (it is also a song I played lead guitar on and sang with my first band, Mid Life Crisis). The album also had On Your Radio and the lovely and ironic It’s Different for Girls.

I bought Jackson’s next foray, Beat Crazy, and it did not do that much for me, but the eclectic musician and songwriter–who studied at Britain’s Royal Music Academy–followed that up with his Jumpin’ Jive Review, a wonderful homage to Cab Calloway and especially Louis Jordan.

Next for Jackson was Night and Day, a nod to pop and to Cole Porter, and an album that featured perhaps Jackson’s best known tune, Stepping Out and while there were still guitars and bass and 4/4 time in Jackson’s compositions, it was clear Jackson’s love for big bands and orchestrations was guiding his evolution as an artist.

By the way, Night and Day was again a very strong product, with diverse, tuneful, and thoughtfully constructed pop tunes. And, Stepping Out represented the first produced video by Jackson, who had eschewed the format that had become a staple in 1982, because he felt that video detracted from the music.

Jackson’s next work, Body and Soul again displayed the move towards a more refined jacksonsound well as jazz in a work that lovingly replicates the cover art of the 1957 release by Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2Body and Soul has also proved to be my favorite Jackson disc, and the one that made my Top 50 (which now seems like a Top 75) for the site here.

Jackson’s next work, Big World, sampled even further beats and rhythms of the world at large, while also displaying another aspect of the principled auteur, for though the album is a double disc, Jackson only felt he had enough quality material for three sides. So, side four is left intentionally blank.

From there Jackson generally moved more towards works that pushed towards fuller orchestrations, eventually delivering his Symphony #1 (1999) and though I stopped buying each of Jackson’s works, I did see Joe and the band on the heels of their Blaze of Glory tour in 1989, and they were beyond great. Tight, tuneful, and funny, with the goofy Jackson playing all kinds of instruments while he stalked around the stage, like a mad musical scientist dressed in a trench-coat, as his band simply smoked.

As noted, since then, Jackson has moved from the punky guitar driven sound that garnered notice, towards classical music (he has also done a bunch of soundtracks, including Mike’s Murder and Tucker), but comparing the literate and erudite Jackson with the likes of Billy Joel is not just wrong, it is criminal (sorry Gene).

One of the things I have noticed as the cluster of us contributing to the site have made our musical loves known, is some of us have a genre we love the most, or that we feel best represents what the site, as in Remnants of Rock, as opposed to country, or pop, or classical or salsa means, is that we have clear lines drawn about what qualifies.

And, while I understand this–and hell, guitar driven tunes are the ones that get me most as you can see by simply watching the I’m the Man vid–I think artists growing and pushing their vision is what keeps art, both theirs and ours, vital.

Joe Jackson is such an artist. Like Prince, or Joni Mitchell, or the Stones or Beatles, Neil Young, or even Dylan, Jackson has never been satisfied simply doing the same mishmash of tunes over and over again.

Rather he pushes and reinvents himself, and his work to keep both the music and himself growing, learning, and producing.

The results speak for themselves, whether he is your cup of Joe or not.

Night Music: The Faces, “Three Button Hand Me Down”

A few weeks back Peter wrote about Humble Pie and their terrific tune, I Don’t Need no Doctor.

Humble Pie was led by Steve Marriott, who not only had among the best and most recognizable rock voices, but was also a founding member of the great Brit pop band, The Small Faces.

Mostly known in the states for their catchy psychedelic hit Itchycoo Park, The Small Faces were far more than the bulk of the states ever appreciated. Their 1968 album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake broke as many rules as an album could in those days. First, the cover of the album was totally different than anything before. It was released in a plastic sleeve, with a fold-out that surrounded the record.ogden Add to that the entire second side was a fairy story song about Happiness Stan’s search for what he thinks is the missing half of the moon. (BTW, Ogdens Nut Gone was one of my Top 50 essential albums.)

The remaining Faces–Ronnie Lane, Ron Wood, Ian McLagan, and Kenny Jones–all hung  with the departure of Marriott, adding Rod Stewart as their new lead singer (Wood invited Stewart to join after the pair worked together on Jeff Beck’s first album, Truth).

The first album the new quintet produced was a fun, bluesy, and listenable work called The First Step, and the other day, as I was streaming KTKE, my Truckee radio station, damned if they did not play a cut from that album, Three Button Hand Me Down.

The Faces were such a great band, both with Marriott and Stewart, and in a way, they were sort of Triple-A Rock and Roll, to the Majors where the players wound up.

Stewart went on to his sort of over-the-top glam career, while Wood joined the Stones, with McLagan supporting the band at times. Kenny Jones drummed with The Who for a while after Keith Moon’s demise, and Ronnie Lane played bass on all of Pete Townshend’s early solo material.

That is a pretty good resume.

So, here is Three Button Hand Me Down

Night Music: Cream, “Tales of Brave Ulysses”

10251Martin Sharp, the designer of the covers of Cream’s albums Disreali Gears and Wheels of Fire, died this week. There’s a nice overview of his psychedelic work here.

Which seems like a good reason to play another bit from Cream, from Disraeli Gears.

I was turning 11 I guess and it was my birthday and a friend’s mother asked what I wanted. I said, “I’d like the album Disraeli Gears,” and she said, in a Monty Python old biddy’s voice I hear it now, “oh, my, an album. That’s a little too expensive,” apparently thinking an “album” was a box of records. My friend set her straight and that’s what they gave me. Good present.

My good buddy Jimmy A. and I loved Jack Bruce’s singing on this one, which was written by Clapton and, surprise, Martin Sharp. The only problem is it isn’t long enough.

Here’s a video of the making of the song, with interviews with Clapton and Sharp.

We Buy White Albums by Rutherford Chang

Dust_and_Grooves_3332Last March the NY Times ran a story about a guy named Rutherford Chang, whose art installation called “We Buy White Albums” was open in Soho of New York City. Chang had collected more than 600 first edition copies of the Beatles album The Beatles, with the embossed lettering, more commonly known as The White Album.

The White Album, Chang found, was something of a tabula rosa, a canvas for stains, drawings, accidents and art, and from the Times story is appears that was part of the plan of the cover’s designer, Richard Hamilton.

Chang created a record store stocked with his White Albums, and spent his time at the store playing each one. They are ordered by the serial numbers that came on the albums pressed before 1975.

Another plan was to play all of them at the same time. Now the record store has opened up in a museum in Hamburg Germany, and Chang has released his overlaid performance of 100 copies of Side 1. It seems record pressings are not all the same, and while this starts out sounding like a somewhat boomy version of side one, by the end of Back in the USSR there is a real loopy dreamscape at work. I learned about this from a story in Slate.

Have a listen here.

Album Cover Album: A Tribute to a Tribute

Back when I was in college, someone–a relative, I don’t remember which one–gave me a book called Album Cover Album for Christmas. I was a record-shop hound and loved album art, but at first didn’t really see the appeal of a book of album covers. I mean, sure, nice, but I’d rather have music. Plus this was put together by the guy who did those fairly hideous covers for Yes. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I didn’t get it at first.

But as I returned to Album Cover Album its influence began to grab hold of me. The odd juxtapositions, the albums (usually old) I’d never seen before, the paintings of Mati Klarwein, which I loved, and a myriad of other delights offered me a chance to browse the record store from the comfort of my own bed. Not better than music, perhaps, but in the end a gift fully appreciated.

In today’s New York Times the music critic Ben Ratliff writes about his youthful encounter with Album Cover Album, in a warm appreciation that also provokes him to say: “Over the next 15 years or so I made my way toward most of the records in the book, consciously or not. As I started to learn something about what a Cecil Taylor record sounded like, as opposed to, say, a Ted Nugent record or a Michael Nyman record, the spaghetti of musical style represented on each page would accelerate my blood, as if each grouping represented a question you had to answer within yourself: What do these different entities have in common? How can you hear them all and think all of this has something to do with you?

“I distrust lists of records you ought to hear, even though making them is part of my job. When you see them, you’re usually reading someone with a well-meaning desire to protect and restrict the understanding of music; you’re reading a subtext of fear and anxiety as much as one of pleasure.”

Which seems to get up into the throat of our arguments about the Remnants’ Essential Albums list.

Album Cover Album, Ratliff concludes, “had no fear or anxiety.”