The History of Rock'n'Roll

By Carl Hanni

Some years back Time-Life put together and released the ten part series "The History of Rock'n'Roll," since issued on five DVDs with two episodes per disc. I recently re-watched the entire series, and started editorializing its pros and cons as I was watching it. For what it's worth, here are some of my thoughts; quite a few of my thoughts, actually. This is pretty self indulgent and definitely the ramblings of an obsessive personality type; if you have no interest in rock'n'roll or fanish, obsessive music chatter, you'd probably be wasting your time reading this. 

Using a standard documentary format of talking-heads styled interviews with musicians, producers, disc jockeys, record execs and others, combined with archival footage and passable but hardly exceptional narration by Gary Busey, the series runs more or less chronologically and is divided into episodes like "Guitar Heroes," "Punk," "The Sounds of Soul," etc. Doing this strictly chronologically is impossible, of course: artists and scenes overlap and flow in and out of each other, and the work of some acts covers several decades. The narrative solution they settled on to get a workable framework for this monumentally unwieldy subject is simple and effective: they run the most important threads (The Beatles, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Motown, etc.) as clusters of affinities (say, other Merseybeat bands w/The Beatles) into a mini-sequence that might cover a few years or so, then double back and do it again with another crew or scene (say, The Rolling Stones, batched up w/The Kinks and The Who) who are in the same time-frame. This works well throughout the series and allows the narration to cut back and forth between the most important acts and scenes, some of who (Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, James Brown) surface in several different episodes. 

The first two episodes are "Rock'n'Roll Explodes" and "Good Rockin' Tonight," and are really two parts of the same story of the development of rock'n'roll out of blues, jazz, R&B, country, doo wop and gospel. It gets off to an inauspicious start with a few standard pontifications on what rock'n'roll is about by Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and Bono, and a completely superfluous couple of minutes of U2 doing "With or Without You." Fortunately it's pretty much all candy from here, and they soon settle into a groove and work it for the next ten hours or so. 

Everyone you would expect is here in vintage black & white - Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Roy Orbison, Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Chubby Checker plus key labels like Chess and Sun Records - but the series archivists also take the time to show the development of rock'n'roll from it's component parts. It's good to see not only country music (Hank Williams in particular) and gospel get their due, but they also take the time to acknowledge the hopped-up R&B of Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner that was the real foundation of R'n'R, and they get the narrative pretty much right. These two episodes feature some of the most mind-blowing footage you're ever likely to see, including Muddy Waters coming on like God himself at the Newport Folk Festival, indescribably entertaining, over-the-top performances from Jerry Lee Lewis, and mesmerizing footage of the young Elvis Presley. Anyone who ever wondered what all the hullabaloo was about over the young Elvis needs to see this. His outrageously lascivious take on "Hound Dog" is simply one of the greatest things of that era captured on film, and the footage of teenagers (boys and girls both) coming utterly unglued in adolescent sexual frenzy is the first footage I'm aware of of the nascent youth/pop culture tsunami waiting just around the corner in the 1960s. It's easy to see why parents were flustered, watching their children pulling away from their authority right before their very eyes. Score one for rock'n'roll.

A few random thoughts on these two shows: Sun Records head Sam Philips is one intense, grandiose mofo, but has the history to back up the bluster; bless them for getting Johnny Otis on camera, a personable cat who is as qualified to talk about rock'n'roll, R&B, soul and jazz as anyone; more kudos for getting Ruth Brown and Joe Strummer on camera; Tom Petty looks really stoned; boy can those kids cut a rug to "At The Hop" by Danny and The Juniors; and Hank Ballard is a card-carrying life of the party. Interesting oddities abound, including Tina Turner and Carl Perkins talking about picking cotton as kids, Perkins waxing about "God's divine plan" in regards to Elvis' preternatural talent, truly creepy footage of the KKK and redneck politicians talking about the evil of rock'n'roll and "degenerate nigger music," and a very young and comically almost-hip Pat Boone finger-popping his way through "Tutti Frutti." These episodes end with shout-outs to Alan Freed, payola and Brill Building pop, as well as the short, swift demise of early rock (Chuck Berry to jail, Elvis to the army, Jerry Lee Lewis in disgrace, Buddy Holly dead, the rise of safe, bland crooner pop ala Frankie Avalon, Fabian, ad nauseum). Score one for the squares. 

Disc two has the episodes "Britain Invades, America Fights Back" and "The Sounds of Soul." "Britain Invades" has pretty much what you would expect: all kinds of choice footage of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals, The Who, The Kinks, The Searchers, Freddy & The Dreamers, Marianne Faithful, Cavern Club, etc. on one side, and Phil Spector, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Mamas and Papas, Young Rascals, Lovin' Spoonful and Motown, etc. on the other. The footage from ‘swinging London' in the early to mid 60s is a great reminder about the magic that can occur when numerous forces (music, fashion, politics, film, etc.) all converge at the same point at the same time, creating a heady atmosphere that can still be felt on film 40 years later. And the argument that the world changed profoundly when John Lennon met Paul McCartney is hard to refute, if you believe that pop culture was one if the key culture drivers of revolutions of the 1960s. Beatles producer George Martin brings some gravitas to the proceedings, while Marianne Faithful turns out to be a delightful, direct tour guide into her own public image. But no Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, the American band most capable of ‘fighting back' in the mid 60s?

"The Sounds of Soul" tries to take in a subject in an hour that would take several hours to do justice to, but does a respectable job of hitting the high points. Motown, Stax Records, Atlantic Records and Philly soul all get their due, although there's no mention of New Orleans soul, Muscle Shoals or  Memphis stalwarts like Hi Records and American Recordings. Again, you get what you would expect: James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy, Gamble & Huff, Diana Ross/Supremes, The Jackson 5, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, The O'Jays. This section benefits from interviews with a bunch of folks who were on the ground: Steve Cropper, Jerry Butler, Gamble & Huff, Gladys Knight, Hank Ballard, Jerry Lieber, Solmon Burke, Patti Labelle, the Righteous Brothers, Quincy Jones, Jerry Wexler, etc. The archival footage of Brown, Redding, Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, The Supremes and more brings it all back, and the message that soul and R&B were an integral part of and partner with the civil rights movement is loud and clear. And after several hours of watching black performers playing in front of polite, well manicured white audiences it's nice to finally see some genuine soul power coming from the audience towards the stage. But no Ike & Tina Turner?

Disc three brings us "Plugging In" and "My Generation." "Plugging In" runs from Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix covering Bob Dylan, with stops along the way in the Greenwich Village folk scene, Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival and the early to mid-60s Los Angeles sounds of the Beach Boys and The Byrds. A quick primer on the founding of FM radio gives way to footage from the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. This is some of the most exciting live footage ever shot in rock'n'roll: you can debate whether Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin or The Who are the most impressive, but of course they are all the most impressive. The Joplin footage is electrifying - as raw, deeply soulful and real as anything I can name-check.  

"My Generation" runs from the San Francisco/Height Asbury hippie explosion of 66' and 67' to Woodstock in 1969 and on to the notorious Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. This hour features some thrilling footage, including Cream, more killer Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones (early Mick Taylor era) doing "Street Fighting Man," The Who kicking the snot out of "Baba O'Rielly" and truly brain altering footage of Santana doing "Soul Sacrifice" at Woodstock. It also includes Allen Ginsberg doing his happy hippie floppy dance, shots of the Trips Festival and Human Be-Ins in S.F., anti-war marches and of course more Jimi Hendrix. It also has footage of a dangerously sexy Jim Morrison and The Doors, and one of my favorite piece: outdoor footage of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young doing "Down by the River." Neil Young is so great here that even his own band member, Steve Stills, is looking on in awe. But where is Sly and the Family Stone, Simon & Garfunkel and "Abbey Road?"

Disc four has "Guitar Heroes" and "The 70's: Have a Nice Decade." "Guitar Heroes" pretty much speaks for itself and is full of Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Van Halen, Carlos Santana and all the usual suspects. Les Paul, T-Bone Walker and Chuck Berry get their due, and the footage of a feral, wolfish Chuck Berry duck-walking through "Johnny B. Goode" will pin your ears back. Jaw-dropping clips of Stevie Ray Vaughn, a riled up BB King and choice Yardbirds material flows around another stupendous, early 70s cut of The Who. Naturally all roads lead to Jimi Hendrix, and the footage of him drilling into the heart of "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" at Woodstock is hard to argue with being the pinnacle of style, innovation, inspiration and raw soul. But where is Johnny Winter?

At this point in the series a sort of narrative fatigue starts to set in, as we spend way to much time looking at and listening to a few of the same guys (one in particular) talking over and over against bland backdrops, and I'm starting to think: why not ten minutes less of so-and-so and not ten more minutes of The Yardbirds or Cream and again, where the heck is Johnny Winter? Fortunately "The 70s: Have a Nice Decade" really gets back on track and is one of the best sequences of the series. It would be hard to go wrong with the embarrassment of riches that was the 70s, and the heavy hitters are all here: Elton John/Fleetwood/Frampton/Springsteen/Bowie/Kiss/Queen/Floyd/Aerosmith/Marley/Browne/Stevie Wonder. Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone get their due, as does Southern Rock, and a clip of vintage Allman Brothers brings back what a visionary act they were back then. For me, the real riches are the raw, early footage of Led Zeppelin before their first record release and first-album era Black Sabbath. I doubt if either band ever sounded better: Zep is a tightly coiled machine unspooling bulldozer blues, Sabbath a dark blast of what was to come. That future-is-now scenario meets its apotheosis in a montage of early Alice Cooper, rock'n'roll spectacle at its most inspired as well as being, in Cooper's own words, "The band that drove a stake through the heart of the love generation." This ends with an extended, almost embarrassing put-down of disco that seems a bit pissy. Love it or hate it, it would have been good to at least mention that disco was the most egalitarian music of the 70s, equally open to anyone regardless of race, class or sexual preference, which is more than can be said for most of the lily-white/long-haired/jeans-clad rock'n'rollers.  

Disc five features "Punk" and "Up From the Underground." "Punk" is one of the very best of the ten episodes for what it has in it, and one of the most vexing for what was left out. Starting w/some gritty b&w footage of Thatcher-era London and scene-setting interviews with Joe Strummer and John Lydon, the filmmakers convey the dead-end decay that spawned British punk rock. They then cut back to the States for a quick history of punk early birds the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, MC5 and The Stooges, all with amazing, visceral footage. Oddly, no mention is made of the true precursors of punk, the Pacific NW bands like The Sonics and The Wailers, and the ex-GI combo The Monks. 

From there we have the well-known story: CBGB's, The Ramones, Richard Hell, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith and Sire Records (but no Television or Suicide) in the U.S, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks, The Jam, Elvis Costello, Stiff Records, the importance of dub reggae on U.K. punk and Malcolm McLaren's SEX shop, etc. in the U.K. They then jump to a very brief West Coast punk scene, with hair raising footage of X blasting thru "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline" and some footage of some hard-core meatheads doing their brain-dead thing, but no Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, etc. It's great to hear Richard Hell, Joey Ramone, Don Letts and photographer Bob Gruen talk, but Malcolm McLaren comes off as an insufferable twit, simultaneously "amazed" and "surprised" at every little thing and taking credit for making much of it happen. This episode leap-frogs from The Clash to Green Day and Nirvana, and therein lies the rub: they had to leave out essentially the entirety of British post punk (PIL, Gang of Four, Joy Division, The Fall, Magazine, etc.) as well as everything that happened in the U.S. after about 1981. No Fugazi, Butthole Surfers, Mudhoney, Touch & Go, Dischord, Merge, on and on and on. They needed another hour, obviously - or perhaps it can roll over into the next one....

But no, you won't find any of that in "Up From The Underground," either. You will find the marquee names in the 80s (Madonna, Michael Jackson, R.E.M., The Police, Chili Peppers, but, oddly, no Prince) + Lollapalooza and wayyyy to much MTV. We have to give them props for a respectable primer on old school hip hop and b-boy culture, though. Given the cultural bias within pop music, they could have left a lot of this out, but didn't. Some of this stuff is pretty fun (Devo) and some of it is insipid (Dire Straits w/Sting, gag), but what it really is, is strangely selective. You can watch the entire hour and not get a single mention of: industrial, goth, ska, hair metal, reggae, rave/techno/house/dance culture/electronica and post punk, much less that massively huge swath of arena metal/rock that was the #1 selling genre of the 1980s. This includes everything from Guns & Roses and Motley Crue to Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and eventually onto Metallica, Megadeath, etc. That's a huge exclusion; but, again, to be fair they would have needed another hour to get that in; but even a brief mention of some or most all of these genres would have gone a long way towards filling the holes. 

Obviously, even at ten hours, the producers of "The History of Rock'n'Roll" had to make some pretty hard and frustrating choices about what to include and what to leave out, and I can't help but feel some sympathy for the decisions that the time constraints put on them. They opted for their version of the key players and movements, and did a respectable job, in a mainstream sort of way. They included interviews w/many artists who weren't otherwise included in the mix of archival footage, getting them into the story in a different fashion. They also opted to let the clips run for respectable lengths, not cutting everything up into tiny bits, and we can thank them for that, also that's obviously one of the reasons why so much other stuff was left out.

Nonetheless, some of the crucial music, movements and artists left out are worth noting, and here's a partial list of who and what else could have easily been included: Richie Valens, Link Wray, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Wanda Jackson, John Lee Hooker, Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention, John McLaughlin/Mahavishnu Orchestra, T Rex, Roxy Music, Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, Issac Hayes and his "Theme From Shaft," Johnny Winter, Fela, The Staples Singers, Al Green, James Taylor, Carole King's "Tapestry," "Louie Louie," 60s garage rock, 70s psychedelic soul, British folk rock, Booker T & the MGs, Ike & Tina Turner, Mitch Ryder/Detroit Wheels, Television, The Damned, Nick Cave, Van Morrison, Donovan, Steppenwolf, "Easy Rider," Creedence Clearwater Revival, Simon & Garfunkel, Gram Parsons, 70s shlock rock ala Journey and Foreigner, prog rock, no wave, industrial, goth, glam, hair metal, 80s metal ala Judas Priest, techo/house music and rave culture, "Bitches Brew," "Abbey Road" and "The White Album," "Let it Bleed" and "Exile on Main Street," Altamont, "Rust Never Sleeps," Motorhead, Joy Division, Gang of Four, The Cramps, Butthole Surfers, Mudhoney, The Minutemen, PIL, Dead Kennedys, DC hardcore, Metallica.

Leonard Cohen, for heaven's sake. PRINCE, for god's sake!

The relative short changing of Sly & The Family Stone, The Kinks and David Bowie live can be chalked up to time constraints, but I'd gladly have traded in 20 minutes of Bono, Skunk Baxter, Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie talking for a look at Ike & Tina Turner, Van Morrison, Creedence, Gram Parsons, Joy Division and PIL. And I'd exchange Sting & Dire Straits, The Eurythmics, some truly atrocious Grateful Dead footage and 10 minutes less of MTV and the pissy disco dis for a little vintage Mothers of Invention, Television, "Gimmie Shelter," some Al Green and Simon and Garfunkel doing "Mrs. Robinson."

No Prince? Really?

But the really vexing omission is not-so-much-as-a-mention of the world-wide explosion of homemade garage rock that The Beatles ushered in that ran from 1963 or so until it merged into the psychedelic scene in 1966-67. The fact that there were 1000s of bands in every country in the world playing this stuff goes unmentioned, and the exclusion of "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen is incomprehensible; how can you do 10 hours on rock'n'roll and not mention "Louie Louie?" The work of bands like The Count Five, The Sonics, Paul Revere and the Raiders, ? Mark and The Mysterians, The Standells, The Seeds and Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs was the very stuff of mid 60s American rock'n'roll; perhaps it was just to big of a subject for the producers to get their heads around. More likely they are acutely aware of it, and feel the omissions more painfully than I do. Putting this together must have been a fun but thankless task. 

Anyway, this comes highly recommended, for hardcore fans or casual listeners alike. It's a fun, enlightening and satisfying way to spend ten hours or so. 

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts an occasional concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, "The B-Side" program on KXCI (Tuesday nights midnight - 2 a.m.) and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, and (occasionally) Goldmine and Signal To Noise.

DJ LENGUA

By Carl Hanni

As the world turntables...

Somewhere along the way ‘dance music' became a genre, much like ‘indie rock' has become a genre; these terms no longer indicate that music is just for dancing, or released by independent labels, but refer to wide but nonetheless finite set of parameters. We know know dance music when we hear it, like we know indie rock when we hear it.  

Dance music now generally refers to that constantly shape shifting and morphing world of electronic dance music, picking up and mixing and discarding sub genres (drum & bass, dubstep, jungle, whatever) that all originated, at one time or another, out of what we used to call house music then eventually, techno. 

Let us acknowledge and give a nod, then, to the makers of original music that subverts the norms of electronic-based but still danceable music. Especially because, for all of it's future-is-now aspects and embracing of new technology, much electronic dance music is pretty standardized and generic; huge swaths of it is tedious and unoriginal, actually. 

DJ Lengua is a cat who knows how to have it both ways. His two mix LPs that I've heard, 2008's DJ Lengua and 2010's Cruzando, (another, Dilo!, came out in 2001) are primers of original and unconventional mixing, but they are (for the most part) still danceable as long as your mind is open and not blindered by the Top 40 mentality of most dance clubs. More importantly, they are listenable, ingeniously constructed and about as much fun as you can have with a slice of vinyl with grooves cut into it. It was that sense of play and mischievousness that first struck me when I heard DJ Lengua for the first time a couple if years ago. It evidenced great musical wit and originality, but didn't neglect the booty, either. Lengua seemed like someone who approached his craft with a sense of play and humor, infinitely attractive qualities for those of us who are primarily interested in dance music that can be listened to and danced to in equal measure. 

DJ Lengua was born and raised for his first fifteen right here in Tucson, as Eamon Ore-Giron. Currently calling Los Angeles home, he's also lived Mexico City, Peru and San Francisco. Like lots of DJs, he's obviously a cultural and musical omnivore, picking up bits of this and that wherever he's lived and traveled. In his case this especially holds true for musics from Peru and Mexico, as well as other musics under the umbrella "Latin Music," a non-genre wide and wildly diverse enough to include everything from vintage Chicano garage rock to Tex Mex, Latin Jazz to Salsa, Tejano to Chicha, and pretty much anything produced in South and Central America and Mexico since the dawn of recording technology. 

It what he does with all of this that is singular and sets Lengua apart of the crowd around the turntables. Radically slowing down or speeding up bits and pieces of this and that, dropping all but a vocal line or a break, thinning it all out and cranking up the high end and mid ranges, while layering it all with his own beats and squeaks - that may sound exactly like what other adventurous mixologists do, but a DJ Lengua mix is a truly original and singular thing. There is something decidedly, delightfully off-kilter and off the wall about every track on DJ Lengua and Cruzando, from the flute twitters on "Cumbia Squares" and psychedelic dub swirl of "l Pacheco" to insistently straight ahead and sassy groove of "Perdido" and the ingeniously catchy "La Jungla." The man's a true stylist.

DJ Lengua is also the co-owner of Unicornio Records and a renowned visual artist (as Eamon Ore-Giron), working in acrylic, spray-paint, silk screening and multi-media. In addition to Lengua's releases, Unicornio has released titles by Chicano Batman and DJ Roger Mas, with more to come. 

To check out some of his stuff, see: 

Unicornio Records: www.unicorniorecords.com

Twitter: @SONIDOLENGUA

www.myspace.com/djlengua

Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/djlengua

DJ MIX: http://supersonido.net/2010/03/09/dj-lengua-rebajada-mota-mix/

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Here's a Q&A we did via e-mail recently:

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts an occasional concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, "The B-Side" program on KXCI (Tuesday nights midnight - 2 a.m.) and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, and (occasionally) Goldmine and Signal To Noise.

Three by Reuben Wilson 

By Carl Hanni

Let us now praise Reuben Wilson. 

Like many of the things that ended up getting seriously under my skin, I happened upon Reuben Wilson haphazardly. A few years ago I grabbed his LP The Sweet Life out of a monster vinyl sale for ten cents, easily the best use of a dime in my entire life. I was pretty much gone 30 seconds into the first track, an instrumental cover of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues." Who was this sweet looking, smiling man on the cover, who looked more like a gospel preacher than a jazz-funk organ master? And who, on inspection, was produced by the great Sonny Lester who had done such memorable work with another jazz/blues/funk cross-over organ giant, Jimmy McGriff?

Reuben Wilson is one of countless jazz cats who flew just under the radar of mass popularity but managed to produce a substantial body of work, make plenty of fans and garner the respect of his peers in a career that dated back to the early 60s, but really picked up speed with his first recording in 1968, On Broadway. He cut some records for the standard-bearer Blue Note Records in the late 60s and early 70s, moved over to the terrific Groove Merchant for some more platters in the mid 70s and eventually recorded for Dusty Groove, Jazzateria, Cannonball, Savant and Scufflin'. The last disc I see listed is 2009's Azure Te from 18th & Vine.

My knowledge really only covers 3 LPs, Love Bug (1969, Blue Note), The Sweet Life (1972, Groove Merchant) and The Cisco Kid (1974, Groove Merchant). This was a great time for jazz funk, soul jazz and blues jazz, especially the jazz organ players of the time. Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Lonnie Smith, Richard "Groove" Holmes and Jimmy McGriff all cut many of their most vital and funky sides during that time, before the double threat of disco and smooth jazz sucked the grease out of the music and replaced it with some strictly artificial, non-organic, non-nutritional substitutes. 

But things have a way of coming back around, and it was only a matter of time before the first generation of crate diggers, DJs and revivalists started poking into the vast treasure trove of funky, break-beat heavy sides these cats collectively cut. From acid jazz and punk funk to hip hop and downtempo, a couple of generations of musicians, DJs, mixologists, re-issue labels and the sharpies at Wax Poetics magazine have all paid tribute to a scene that laid the ground for much what came next. Reuben Wilson has certainly been a key playa in all of this, with his stuff being sampled by (amongst others) Brand New Heavies, A Tribe Called Quest and NAS. 

Wilson's music extrudes good cheer, a relaxed approach, a fat tone and is accessible in the very best sense of the word. Perhaps not a true innovator, he nonetheless took the pulse of the times and turned it back out as well an anyone. His work on the Hammond B-3 is right up there with all the other legendary organ slingers of the time. Not as bluesy as Jimmy McGriff or straight-up jazzy as Jimmy Smith, it might be closer to Brother Jack McDuff and Wilson's one-time mentor Richard "Groove" Holmes, but he always had his own thing all the way. Fluid, melodic and empathetic, he can ride a groove with the best of them, with a great sense of when to step out and when to lay back and let his cohorts do the talking. And, he certainly has a knack for surrounding himself with world class players. Love Bug features a mouth-watering line-up of heavy jazz talent, including Lee Morgan, Grant Green, George Coleman and drummer Idris Muhammad, who lays down some sublimely funky grooves behind Wilson. Roy Haynes and Sam Rivers also played with Wilson on some of his other five releases for Blue Note.

The Sweet Life and The Cisco Kid both feature different players, including the great studio ringer Melvin Sparks on guitar, but have a very similar sound and groove thanks in no small part to producer Sonny Lester, who clearly knew just what to do to get the most out of Wilson in the studio. All three of these records feature an even mix of Wilson originals and covers of signature songs of the times like "Superfly," "Last Tango in Paris," Stanley Turrentine's "Sugar" and songs from the Hal David/Burt Bacharach song-book. With a couple of exceptions (including a terrific take on Gaye's "Inner City Blues" and the War number "The Cisco Kid") Wilson's originals cut the covers to shreds, a good sign by any marker. Wilson's numbers are funkier, grittier and more groove happy, and numbers like "Hot Rod," "Groove Grease," "The Sweet Life," "Creampuff," "Snaps," "Love Bug" and "Back Out" must be considered high-water marks in jazz funk in the pre-CTI era, after which the connection between jazz funk and low-carb ear candy became much more pronounced, with radically mixed results. 

Reuben Wilson went on to record numerous records after these three, although he took a twenty year break from recording between 1975s Got To Get Your Own and 1996's Live at SOB's. One of these is a collection of Beastie Boys covers he and some cohorts recorded, called Boogaloo to the Beastie Boys, which is more than appropriate given how much of their all-instrumental output can clearly be traced to Wilson and other jazz funk instrumentalists. These records are all outside of my ears and will stay that way until I happen across them on vinyl or CD--ain't no downloads in this house. Wherever Rueben Wilson is, he is sitting on a life's work of great vitality and joyous grooves, and the world would most likely be a better place with a few more like him around.

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts an occasional concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, "The B-Side" program on KXCI (Tuesday nights midnight - 2 a.m.) and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, and (occasionally) Goldmine and Signal To Noise.

By Carl Hanni

Digging in Tucson Pt. 2

Here are some more recent finds from crate, yard and estate sale digging in Tucson. Again, none of these cost more than a buck, and quite a few were a quarter. All of them play well. 

George Jones, George Jones Sings; Grand Ole Opry's New Star, Mercury/Starday Custom High Fidelity + The Hillbilly Hit Parade Volume 1, Starday Records. I believe these are Jones' first two LPs. Young George looks like an angel in a cowboy hat and sings with glorious, lung clearing abandon.  This is the good, raw, rocking honky tonk of the late 50s before the Nashville music machine fully took over and blanded everything into baby food and laxative.

Sabicas, Flamenco Variations on Three Guitars, Hi Fi Decca Records. The great Spanish Flamenco master triple-tracks himself to terrific effect on 10 Sabicas originals. Adapting various traditional forms into his originals, Sabicas presents a primer on soulful, passionate Flamenco playing. Perfect for seduction, deep thought, soul-searching and falling in love with. 

Bela Babai, Gypsy Love, Columbia Records. Subtitled King of the Gypsy Violin and His Orchestra. Although not gypsy himself, the Hungarian violinist and band leader Bela Babai is still the real deal, a virtuoso who helped keep the sounds of traditional European gypsy music alive during some pretty dark times. A child prodigy on the violin, Babai grew up to be one of the masters of the form, and Gypsy Love is full of his incredibly moving playing.

Nino Rota, Juliet of the Spirits original soundtrack, Lumiere Records, French import. I generally avoid the term, but Juliet of the Spirits is whimsical in the best sense of the term. The Nino Rota/Federico Fellini relationship was one of the most fruitful collaborations between a filmmaker and composer in cinema history, and it's difficult to imagine Fellini's films without Rota's music. Juliet of the Spirits is full of the kind of bittersweet, slightly cockeyed compositions that Rota pioneered decades before Danny Elfman came along and picked the shop clean. 

Dylan Thomas Reading Vol. 1, A Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems, Caedmon Records. Spoken word speciality label Caedmon's first recording finds Thomas in an expansive and musical mood. Indeed, the revelation here is the musicality in Thomas' readings, a rhythmic, sing-song cadence that brings the famous short story of the title and 5 of his poems into tight focus. Thomas' peerless diction, precise 4-4 timing and inviting brogue finds the tricky middle ground between the pub and the academy, perfectly animating these much loved and often quoted pieces.  The textured, wood-block print cover is also a classic. 

Red Simpson, Roll, Truck, Roll. Clean-as-new British import copy. A true trucker classic from 1966, and one of the original, genre-defining releases. This helped set the mold for clean, hard, Bakersfield/Buck Owens'-styled trucker music. Includes standards like "Truck Drivin' Man," "Give Me Forty Acres," "Six Days on the Road" and "Nitro Express." Owens co-wrote two numbers with Simpson. 

Truck and Country, Nashville Records. This compilation includes tracks by trucker country stars Red Sovine, the Willis Brothers, Merle Kilgore and others. Includes the classics "Big Wheel" by Ray King and the hot instrumental "Phoenix After Hours" by Glen Campbell. Ok, I'll admit it: what really makes this record is the four cowboy-hatted gals on the front, who look like they were all hired from a model agency specializing in corn-fed, cheerleaderrific all-American girls. The likeliood that they they were probably all Nixon-supporters diminishes their hubba hubba appeal a wee bit, but nothing serious.

Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, High Priest of Love; 1986, Warp Records 1, British import. Thus is so great I played it thru 5 times right off. You remember Grebo, right? The uniquely British, greasy biker psychedelic/hard rock sub-genre briefly popularized in the mid 80s by...Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. Like an even-more sex-obsessed Motorhead dosed with vast amounts of psychedelics and booze, Zodiac Mindwarp didn't catch on much here in the States, but had a brief fling w/the British rock press and public back in the day. From the cover: "Stars blazing behind mad eyes, we descended to Earth in a broken Cadillac drawn by swans. We crafted music from the air and scattered it across the teenage frequency. We were born in the fifth dimension. The twilight goddess pays our wages. Tell the government the Love Reaction wants the world." This is, most likely, the devil's music. 

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts an occasional concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, "The B-Side" program on KXCI (Tuesday nights midnight - 2 a.m.) and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, and (occasionally) Goldmine and Signal To Noise.

By Carl Hanni

Digging Tucson

Tucson is a somewhat schizo town to scout records in. We have some decent record stores, but nothing (apologies, proprietors) that's a truly world class store. Conversely, there seems to be quite a bit of vinyl flowing underground, if you know where to look. Most of the interesting stuff I've found in recent years has been in off the wall situations; yard sales, specialty sales, one-offs, my own sources (ohhh!). The cheapness of a lot of all this digging (nothing here was over a buck, quite a few for .25 cents) also allows for all kinds of experimentation. Here's a few hits from recent digging, all thoroughly playable.

Menescal: The Boy From Ipanema Beach, KAPP Records. This is a genuine Bossa Nova classic, as good as any I own. Led by guitarist Roberto Menescal, and featuring a young Eumir Deodato on piano. Actually, they're all young: the liner notes say they were all between 15 and 20 years old when they cut this. A summer record for all seasons, fully of casually perfect, mid and down tempo Bossa Nova numbers to chill or slow dance around the pool to.

Luiz Bonfa: Softly, Epic Records. Another Bossa Nova treasure, featuring twelve numbers by the Brazilian guitar master. Easy and sunny, this seemingly effortless music flows like water. The back ground musicians are a model of subelty and restraint, groove music taken to an almost narcotic perfection. 

Candy original motion picture soundtrack, 1968, ABC Records: original score! by Dave Grusin, and featuring tracks by The Byrds (the hippie-dippy "Child of the Universe") and two killer Steppenwolf numbers ("Rock Me," "Magic Carpet Ride"). But the real juice is Grusin's freakout pop/psych/mariachi/Indian soundtrack music, one of the most tripped out demented of the period. Sample titles: "Birth by Descent," "It's Always Because of This: A Deformity," "Opening Night: By Surgery," "Marlon & His Sacred Bird," "Ascension to Virginity" (whatever) and everybody's favorite, "Spec-Rac-Tac-Para-Com." I'm not making this up. The cast includes James Coburn, Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Charles Aznavour, John Houston (now there's a whole of lot testosterone), Ringo Starr, Walter Matthau, Sugar Ray Robinson (?) and Anita Pallenberg. Not many women, except for the nymphomaniac lead, Ewa Aulin. Ah, the casual, liberated sexism of the 60s. 

Philippe Besombes: LIBRA soundtrack, Tapioca Records (1975, French import). Score. Highly respected French electronic psychout soundtrack. And with good reason: this is the merde, dark, unsettling and creepy, a bad trip on vinyl. But fascinating, hey.  Besombes went on to work with avant garde-ists Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis & Karlheinz Stockhausen. LIBRA is prime early electronic-based psychedelia at it's most horror-show. 

Elemental 7, original soundtrack, 1983, Rough Trade British import. Another super spooky, dark electronic soundtrack, composed and played by CTI, which is ex-Throbbing Gristle members Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti with film/video guy John Lacey. Soundtrack to an hour long video. Contains the track "Dancing Ghosts," an early, experimental/dark acid house, zombie-dance number. The rest of it sounds like the soundtrack to a black mass. 

Python Lee Jackson: In A Broken Dream, GNP/Crescendo Records. Smoking hot 1972 blues rock w/a young, hot-throated Rod Stewart guesting on 3 tracks. The band migrated from Australia to the UK in the late 60s, where this was recorded. The title song has a truly terrifying guitar solo. 

Bobby Whitlock: Raw Velvet, Dunhill Records. White boy gospel blues-rock nirvana, warm and wet as only analog recordings from the early 1970s can be. Whitlock may be forever immortalized as the vocalist and keyboard player on Derek & The Dominos Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (both records came out in 1972), but his version of "Tell The Truth" cuts the Dominos for my money. Perhaps faced with the specter of Clapton, guitar player Rick Vito kicks out all the stops. Whitlock has one of those voices that come along all to rarely; in another time or place he could have been a gospel star. Jimmy Miller produces. 

Chet Atkins: The Guitar Genius, RCA/Camden Records. Chet Atkins recorded a LOT of records; this is a particularly scintillating one. Recorded before strings and a chorus blanded some of his stuff out, this is pretty is pretty badass Chet, before the production line.  

The Ventures: Guitar Freakout, Dolton Records. The Ventures also put out barge loads of records, sometimes reductive, sometimes not. This is really solid, with several hardcore, undiluted titles like "Off in the 93rds," "Wack Wack," "Mod East" and the title track. Song title of the month: "Cookout Freakout on Lookout Mountain."

Next month: more Tucson digging.

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts an occasional concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, "The B-Side" program on KXCI (Tuesday nights midnight - 2 a.m.) and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, and (occasionally) Goldmine and Signal To Noise.

By Carl Hanni

Digging (in) France

So, I found myself scouting records in Nantes, France. Nantes is a beautiful, old-new city that also happens to be home to a band (French Cowboy), a DJ (French Tourist) and a label (Havalina Records) that have numerous connections to my home, Tucson, AZ. The genesis of that connection is a pretty interesting story, but not really relevant to today's topic of record digging in France...

France is not a cheap place to record shop in, new or used, but nonetheless I managed to come away with a short stack of treasures, 7 and 12 inch both. Here are some of the highlights, all of them French, all on vinyl.

Serge Gainsbourg, Aux Armes et Caetera. When urged to buy national hero Serge Gainsbourg's reggae album my first reaction was skepticism, but Aux Armes et Caetera is absurdly good. Recorded in Jamaica (thank god) in 1979 with Sly & Robbie, the I-Threes and other roots reggae aces, Aux Armes... is smooth, sexy and completely believable, which is more than I can say for most any other white-guy-in-Jamaica record I can think of. The French' unceasing attachment to Serge Gainsbourg makes me strangely happy.

Serge Gainsbourg,  Anna soundtrack. Starring Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy; Gainsbourg wrote the music and is also one of the stars, along with Marianne Faithful. This is a fabulous collection of cinematic French pop, circa swinging 1967. Buy it if you can find it.

Ben & The Platano Group, Paris Soul. Bought on the insistence of French Tourist, Paris Soul turns out to be a DJ's dream find. First released in 1972, Ben & The Plantano Group mix up French funk, Latin Jazz and more, sometimes sounding like French version of vintage, Hammond organ driven El Chicano. Understandably highly sought after by collectors and DJs, I found a fine re-release from the original label,  Barclay Records.

Starshooter: the first release (1978) from this French punk rock band tears it up and down. Working out of Lyon, they managed a huge European hit in 1978 with "Get Baque" before running into some legal trouble with it. Previously unknown to me, now I'm all over it.

Francoise Hardy: the fifth record, from 1965, by the popular French chanteuse with the dreamy voice and sexy bangs. Includes a cover of "When I Get Through with You"  ("Quel Mal Y A-T-Il A Ca") first recorded by Patsy Cline in 1962 and the hit "L'Amitie."

Manset: Another one courtesy of French Tourist, who gifted it my way. I'm still getting a grip on this one from 1972. Intense singer/songwriter/rock/pop. He swears it's a masterpiece. I'm feeling the language barrier on this one. 

Francois Rabbath,  The Sound of a Bass. The most unexpected and off the wall of all my finds. Wildly inventive double-bass and drums jazz excursions from a Syrian-born, Paris-bassed (sorry!) player, originally released in 1963. With just his own bass and drummer Armand Molinetti, Rabbath concocts a head-altering series of compositions/themes, with descriptions that include "Ironical jazz in the vein of present day life" ("Creasy Course"), "Magic transposition of the ambiguity of every day life" ("Kobolds") and my favorite, "Malicious dissonances over five octaves" ("Basses en Fugue"). The latter has to be heard to be believed; that's a bass making all those eerie, other-worldy sounds, apparently. 

Whizz Vol. 2, Psychodrama Francias 1966-70. Note: that's Psychodrama, not Psychedelic. Not knowing what they are singing about, I'm left to infer/make up what these fifteen tracks of demented, whacked French psychodrama might be all about.  Rock, psych, pop, cinematic bits and the pleasingly unclassifiable all stand and deliver...something. The music is fabulous; the prevailing feeling is one of giddy hysteria. Gifted by Benjamin in Paris. 

I also scored choice ones by Bohannon, Santa Esmeralda and David Murray and a fabulous compilation of psychedelic funk from around the world called Psych Funk 101. On seven inch, I picked up some choice jazz singles by Art Blakey ("Moanin' pts. 1 and 2'') and Jimmy Smith ("When the Saints Go Marching in" b/w "Prayer Meetin'"), hip hop by Phase II, Technotronic, Tidee-T ("Sequential Groove") and Joe Bataan ("Rap-O Clap-O"), Timmy Thomas' classic "Why Can't We Live Together" (w/the great "Funky Me" on the flip) + the 80s dance classic "Bustin' Out" by Material w/Nona Hendryx and two vintage Manu Dibango singles, "Soul Makossa" and "Super Kumba." A real find was a three song single by the recently deceased Lizzy Mercer Descloux, including "Fog Horn Blues" w/Chet Baker on horn. Score!

Thanks for scouting help to Laurent Marescal, Julia Butault, French Tourist, Anthony at Melomane Records and that guy in the market in Nantes who cut me a deal on all the vinyl and singles. Also thanks for all the CDs that came my way, especially the Serge Gainsbourg 3-fer from Laurent.

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts an occasional concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, "The B-Side" program on KXCI (Tuesday nights midnight - 2 a.m.) and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, and (occasionally) Goldmine and Signal To Noise.

By Carl Hanni

SXSW CD Swag Sampler!

SXSW is a bounty of unasked-for (and sometimes unwanted) CDs, cassettes, download cards and more, pressed into our hands at shows, in the convention center and on the street by sometimes anxious, occasionally sweaty strangers. Some of them are treasure troves. Here's the scoop on a few of the best ones I received. 

Boom Pam: somebody handed me this at the Balkan Beat Box show, which is fully appropriate. From Tel Aviv, Boom Pam mash up twangy surf guitars, Middle Eastern/Mediterranean and Balkan beats, plenty of forward motion and a rocking tuba on "Malibu" and four other tracks on a delightful five song EP. www.boompam.org,  www.myspace.com/boompam.

Guadalupe Plata: I got this from a gent at the booth promoting new music from Spain in the  trade show in the convention center. Guadalupe Plata are a 3 piece playing big, heavy blues ala Black Keys, R.L. Burnside and John Lee Hooker, played w/drastic fire and amazing chops, especially on the slide guitar. In addition to these masters their MySpace mentions Hound Dog Taylor, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Skip James, Son House and Elmore James. Who knew the Spanish had the dirty blues gene? Amazing stuff.  www.myspace.com/guadalupeplata.

The China Invasion Tour 2010, Featuring Bands from Maybe Mars. From a showcase of new Chinese bands. This 16 song sampler features nine contemporary Chinese "rock" acts, several who record on the Maybe Mars label and many who come out of the D-22 Club scene in Beijing. I'd previously heard the electrified Carsick Cars and the terrific 3 piece Snapline, who played an eye-opening set on guitar, vocals and keyboard. P.K.14 were a SXSW buzz band this year, according to some sources. White seen to be drawing their energy from Philip Glass, while Xiao He from an avant garde re-casting of traditional Chinese folk music. Av Okubo, Gar, 24 Hours and Ourself Beside Me also represent. The energy from these bands is all experimental, fresh and genre-bending. The kids are alright in China, apparently. www.maybemars.com. 

I got to see the Berkeley-based Real Vocal String Quartet perform a beautifully played, lovely set, despite a feedback-jittery PA and a rolling tide of deep booty bass from the club next door. The four women add vocals to their violin, viola and cello line-up, presenting a modern chamber mash-up of music from around the world. I got the self-titled 14 song CD from cellist Jessica Ivy, who I also saw at terrific sets by Golden Arm Trio and Fishtank Ensemble. Their set was a welcome respite from the drunken hoo-raw outside the club, and proof that you can see just about anything you want at SXSW, if you bother to look for it. www.rvsq.com.

I also got a LED Artists sampler CD from a charming woman at the Balkan Beat Box show. A collection of artists that they represent? distribute? promote?, the sampler features 19 tracks by 15 international acts, including Kimi Djabate (Guinea-Bissau), Nguyen Le (Paris via Vietnam), Liu Fang (China), Boris Malkovsky (Israel), Ljova and the Kontraband (NYC via Russia)  and Mercedes Peon (Spain). This is the real world music--less on electronic beat/world groove, more on modern updates on traditional music that doesn't necessarily have one eye cocked towards the dance floor at all times. www.LEDartists.net.

Light In The Attic Records sampler. I spent some time--and some $--hanging out at the booth the Seattle-based Light In The Attic Records had at the SXSW record show. LITA are one of the the top-shelf re-isssue labels in the country, who also distribute other fabulous, European based re-issue labels like Vampisoul, Timmion Trikont. These are the folks that did such a great job re-issuing all four of funk goddess Betty Davis four releases, as well as key records by legendary folkie Karen Dalton, garage punk ground-breakers The Monks and more. Their catalogue is stuffed full of amazing soul, funk, reggae, R&B, Latin, psychedelic, rock and folk releases. The sampler CD has tracks by Davis, Dalton, Monks + Rodriguez, the Black Angels, Earth, Roots and Water, The Free Design and more. www.lightintheattic.net.

Funk Aid for Africa and Haiti, mixed and compiled by DJ Obah. Ok, I paid for this one (for a good cause) at a showcase put together by Wax Poetics magazine and Dubspot Records. This was one of best showcases I saw at SXSW, with sets by Ocote Soul Sounds, Chico Mann, Brownout, Jovi Rockwell and more, with killer DJ sets between acts. The sampler CD features a continuous groove mix by Ocote, Ticklah, Happy Mayfield, The Pimps of Joytime, El Pueblo and many more. www.dubspot.com, www.nextaid.org. 

Stone River Boys, Love On The Dial. Perhaps this isn't totally fair--I ride to and from SXSW w/SRB's manager and I know and have worked with one of them (Dave Gonzalez) off and on for years--but it WAS given to me at SXSW, and it/they are so darn good that it really shouldn't go unmentioned. Fronted by Texas country soul singer/songwriter legend Mike Barfield and featuring the awesome guitar, vocal and songwriting talents of Dave Gonzalez (Hacienda Brothers, The Paladins), the Stone River Boys pick up more or less where the Hacienda Brothers left off, producing an untouchable fusion of modern Texas soul and hard, precise honky tonk music. I saw the Boys wind a mid-afternoon crowd up into a spinning top with just four songs. The record is a monster. www.stoneriverboys.com.

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts a monthly concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, Goldmine, Examiner.com and (occasionally) Signal To Noise.

Jimmy McGriff at the Hammond B-3

By Carl Hanni

Let us now praise Jimmy McGriff. 

The roll call of great jazz organists is finite but full of very large characters with very large talents; Richard "Groove" Holmes, "Brother" Jack McDuff, Johnny Hammond, Charles Earland and of course Jimmy Smith come immediately to mind. But for my $, Jimmy McGriff is top cat, the baddest of the bad, soul brother #1 of the jazz organ.

Jimmy McGriff's reputation and standard tag line posit him being the bluesiest of the great soul-jazz organists of the golden era of the 1960s and ‘70s, and that's a fair assessment. He's definitely brings a hard blues edge to his work that the others all took turns swinging at, but that in no way equals any sort of a narrow focus in McGriff's playing; in truth he was as, or more, diverse than the rest of the Hammond B-3 pack. 

I've only heard a relatively modest amount of McGriff's quite extensive catalogue that dates back to 1963, but have heard enough to know that it's a very great thing indeed. McGriff, who died in 2008, extruded a sense of positivity and flair in his playing that might seems at odds as his status as a blues player unless we've forgotten that playing the blues was/is, after all, about banishing the blues and trying to have a good time doing it. That is, while we're not dragging the line through the harsh, painful bottom end of the blues pond. Like all great bluesmen McGriff could play both sides of the coin, the upside and the downside. If he spent more time on the up, joyful side, well, that's just who he was. His fusion of blues, R&B, soul and jazz remains one of the most refreshing and enjoyable in modern music, sounding vital and very alive several decades after his cut his most famous sides. 

McGriff benefitted from long associations with some cool labels in the ‘60s and ‘70s like Groove Merchant and Solid State, and, later in his career (he died in 2008) with Milestone Records. He also benefitted hugely from his collaborators, especially the producer Sonny Lester who he cut numerous records with. Lester was obviously key to McGriff's polished, inviting sound and overall sonic stylishness. All artists should be so lucky as to have such a solid collaborator; one can only imagine the confidence it would engender, knowing that the guy in the control room has your back.

McGriff cut hot sides with soul-blues belter Junior Parker, with gospel singer Tramaine Hawkins, some cutting sessions with his mentor Groove Holmes and a series of records later in his career with the great sax player Hank Crawford. He also worked with fellow soul-jazz legends David "Fathead" Newman and Bernard "Pretty" Purdie as The Dream Team towards the end of his career. He had hit singles like the early "I Got A Woman," "Kiko" and the super funky "The Worm," and several albums did quite well on the R&B and jazz charts. He played in Buddy Rich's band off and on for a couple of years, fronted some mid-sized big bands and experimented with smoother jazz fusion in the dreaded late ‘70s (the Sargasso Sea of jazz) before dropping that crap and getting funky again. The man had a full, satisfying career. 

When discussing Jimmy McGriff it all eventually circles back to the one thing, the key thing, the thing that lives on; that SOUND, McGriff behind the Hammond B-3, the Jaguar/monster-truck hybrid of organs. One of the greatest sonic contraptions of the 20th century, the B-3 is to organs as the V-8 was to earlier engines; an advanced specimen, capable of great and sometimes terrifying things, dangerous and thrilling in the hands of a master like Jimmy McGriff or others like the afore mentioned Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, etc.  Although McGriff came to the organ after playing several other instruments, he was clearly a natural. His playing seems effortless and totally unaffected; he has flow, soul and an endless supply of groove. His mix of soul, blues, jazz, R&B and funk covered a good portion of the bases of what was worth listening to in popular music in the 1960s and ‘70s and on into the ‘90s. McGriff was a man of his times, reflecting back the best of what was in the air and on the street.

Some of own favorite Jimmy McGriff records include A Bag Full of Blues, A Thing to Come By, Jimmy McGriff at the Organ, The Main Squeeze and Soul Organ.

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts a monthly concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. He currently writes for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, Goldmine, Examiner.com and (occasionally) Signal To Noise.

The Grease Band - Grease Band

By Carl Hanni

The Grease Band: you've probably heard them, whether you know it or not. At least, if you listened to any British rock & roll in the 1970s. 

The Grease Band's self-titled debut was released in 1971, on Leon Russell's Shelter Records imprint, home to Freddie King and JJ Cale among others. A second one came out in 1975; I've never heard it, or even seen a copy. They were five Brits, vocalist and guitar ace Henry McCullough, guitar player Neil Hubbard, bass player Alan Spenner, drummer Bruce Rowlands and keyboard player/arranger/producer Chris Stainton, for some 70s reason listed as "Phil Harmonious Plunk" on the credits. Stainton also shares production credits on the record, along with the band and Nigel Thomas. 

By the time of this release The Grease Band had been working as Joe Cocker's back up band, appearing piecemeal on his debut With A Little Help From My Friends, wholly on his classic second release Joe Cocker!" and backing him up at his famous Woodstock appearance. Stainton was also a key member of Cocker's legendary mega band/traveling circus Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour and album in 1970. Furthermore, the band, minus Stainton, were the principal players on the original release of Jesus Christ Superstar, a musical footnote that seems mysteriously lost in the mists of time (no mention in All Music, etc.). 

Like many records of the time, The Grease Band is an uneven release, with at least one more or less forgettable number, a few mid-range ones and a few killer tracks. Why should you care, or why should I spend any time trying to make you care? Because on at least four or five of these tracks The Grease Band shows How It's Supposed To Be Done, and because The Grease Band had Henry McCullough and Chris Stainton, a pair of true adepts.   

And because The Grease Band fully embody That Sound: that early ‘70s, warm, fabulously rich (here it comes...) ANALOG sound that folks are still trying to get back to. That sound is evident on the first track, a funky vamp on Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "My Baby Left Me" that sidles in and stands around for a few moments before suddenly picking up speed and wrapping itself around McCullough's ragged voice. But what you want out of this track is McCullough's knotty solo, a few short moments of biting, swooping blues-rock guitar candy with a brutal tone to turn others to stone. This little bit of guitar grease puts McCullough right in there with the other British blues-rock guitarists of the time, at least the likes of Rory Gallagher, Kim Simmons, Peter Green and Alvin Lee, if not quite Jeff Beck or Jimmy Page. 

McCullough's acoustic-based numbers like "Mistake No Doubt," "Let it be Gone" and "All I Wanna Do" are solid and well worth repeat listens, especially the ghostly chorus on "Mistake No Doubt." And the lovely gospel-folk "To The Lord" should have/could have run in the end credits to an episode of "Deadwood." But what The Grease Band really excel at is an original take on methodical, mid-tempo rocking, and  "Willie and the Pig"  "Laugh at the Judge" and "Jessie James" nail it to the barn door. "Willie and the Pig" is all snaky, buzzing guitars, multi-tracked keyboards and McCullough's nasally voice married to a sexy, flat beat.  "Jessie James" is a blues rocker w/a country undercurrent that sounds something like a kissing cousin to Fleetwood Mac's "Hi Ho Silver" that came out the year before on Kiln House. But "Laugh at the Judge" is the real ringer, a truly funky rocker that takes the famous Chuck Berry guitar riff, spins it on its ear and puts a funky groove and Stainton's rhythm organ underneath. By the end Stainton's top shelf/lead organ steals the show, hitting notes on the outro as high as any I've ever heard. The album ends w/the beautiful acoustic lament "The Visitor," with Stainton's organ (or maybe harmonium) again taking the lead.

Throughout the record Spenner and Rowlands' rhythm section is flexible, providing intuitive accompaniment to whatever comes their way. There's a cohesiveness evident from the time spent touring and recording together that really shows in how generally relaxed and together the band sounds. There's real joy in how they play together, also evident in the cover photos; these guys are obviously loose and having a good time.

McCullough went on to play in Wings w/Paul McCartney and record with Spooky Tooth, Roy Harper, Marianne Faithful and others. Spenner and Hubbard later played on records by Roxy Music; Stainton is a widely travelled player, playing on numerous releases by Eric Clapton + more by Cocker, Pete Townsend and many more. 

The Grease Band. Yes, they were. 

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey, book hound and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts a monthly concert and film series at The Screening Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. He currently write for Blurt, Tucson Weekly, Goldmine, Examiner.com and (occasionally) Signal To Noise.

James Luther Dickinson's Dixie Fried

By Carl Hanni

This month Sonic Reducer pays tribute and respect to James Luther "Jim" Dickinson, one-man repository of the southern musical vernacular, kudzu-crusted swamp boogie conjuror and musical force of nature. 

Jim Dickinson, who recently passed along into the great recording studio on the other side, was one of those Large Characters that can only come from the American South. Equal parts iconoclast, master collaborator, producer of note, studio rat par-excellence, keyboard-man/multi-instrumentalist in demand, character, legend, raconteur and living (now deceased) archive of several Southern musical traditions, Dickinson lived several musical lives, often at the same time. He became, over several decades, the very stuff of Memphis itself. His home (barn, really) studio in the Mississippi Hill Country south of Memphis became a point of destination for generations of bands looks for some genuine Southern grits and grease in their sound and in their point of view. And his life was a tabula rasa of dedication to putting the bomp in the bomp-shu-bomp-du-bomp and the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong.

Jim's myriad of projects, bands, recordings, production credits, etc. have been detailed elsewhere many times, including recently here in Blurt, and are too numerous to go into in complete detail. But if there's anyone out there who hasn't heard the list yet, a few of the highlights include producing and collaborating with Alex Chilton on Big Star's legendary Big Star 3 and Chilton's disaster-masterpiece Like Flys on Sherbert; recording memorable records for The Replacements, Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Green on Red, Flamin' Groovies, True Believers, Jason and the Scorchers, North Mississippi All-Stars plus many many more; several fruitful collaborations with Ry Cooder (including the soundtrack to Paris, Texas); and a legendary Muscle Shoals recording session with the Rolling Stones in 1971. Along the way he sired a couple of the coolest kids in music, Cody and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All Stars, played in the legendary bar-room wreckers Mud Boy Slim and the Neutrons and the famous Atlantic Records studio band the Dixie Flyers, recording behind Aretha Franklin among others. Bob Dylan, Toots and The Maytals and Jerry Jeff Walker all benefited from having him in the studio, along with several dozen other acts. Oh, and he recorded a bunch of solo records, starting with 1971's Dixie Fried.

Something of a legendary/long out of print classic, Dixie Fried showcases what Dickinson felt like doing when left to his own devices. It's nine songs form a Memphis stew of looney tunes rock & roll, Hill Country country, white boy blues, minstrel-show boogie and whatever else they feel like taking a run at . Not everything on Dixie Friedsticks in my brain, but the ones that do are impossible to dislodge. He and his 2 dozen + players listed nail the stutter rhythms of the circus side-show boogie on "Oh How She Dances" to perfection. He tears the roof off Carl Perkins' "Dixie Fried," conjuring up a shuffle beat that Little Feat would build an entire career around. His tricked-out version of Bob Dylan's "John Brown" is a psychedelic folk blues classic . His own composition "The Judgement" is a small wonder, a hybrid of jazzy, country flecked gospel and cosmic blues. And his take on Furry Lewis' "Casey Jones (On The Road Again)" is a deliberately unfolding narrative that rolls on like a slow moving train shuttling between the barroom, the jail and the church.

Produced by Dickinson and legendary Atlantic Records producer/engineer Tom Dowd, Dixie Fried sounds delicious in that warm, wet way that so many records did back in the analog early '70s. The drum sound on every track, the Memphis-fried dubby effects on "John Brown" and the fabulous separation in the mix from start to finish are textbook/Production 101; except that, in truth, nothing that Dickinson did resembled anything in a textbook or academic or generic or standard. Intuition pretty clearly dominated intellect in his playing and producing. Enthusiasm, humor (ribald and otherwise) and a sense of communal playfulness infuses everything on Dixie Fried, as it did on most of his records. This is a fun record. 

Jim Dickinson was one of those guys that only come along a few times in a generation. He was a catalyst, the guy putting in the long hours, making everyone and everything around him better, leading by example, setting standards and making and breaking rules as he went along. Jim, wherever you are: is the piano in or out of tune there?

***

You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

Vivian Weathers' Bad Weather

By Carl Hanni

Here's a question for academics and true-blood music lovers alike: how important  is biography and contextulization to fully appreciate an artist's work? Or can the work simply do all the speaking for itself?

Consider Vivian Weathers. His recorded output appears to be limited to a single solo album, Bad Weather, a couple of singles, a track on a dub compilation and playing bass and some guitar on dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson's epochal first three records. This little burst of activity all took place between 1978 and 1980; he seems to have evaporated since then. Biographical information? I heard he was a school-mate of LKJ; other than that, good luck.

But Weathers' one album is so solid and in the pocket that that's all he needs to have left a foot print on lover's-rock reggae. Released on Virgin's Front Line imprint in 1978, Bad Weather proffers a British Jamaican take on roots reggae steeped in American soul and blues. It takes about 20 seconds into the first track, "Going To The Blues," to realize that here is, quite literally, a unique voice. Against a slippery groove Weather's sweet falsetto slides in like a whisper in the ear. Weathers can express pleasure and pain simultaneously; his voice mirrors two sides of the human equation, sweet and sultry while also melancholy and blue. This duality plays itself out over all ten tracks of Bad Weather. "Hip Hug" is as as sexy a slow jam anything cut in a British or Jamaican studio, but again with the push and pull; Weathers sounds both ecstatic and tortured. Same with the sizzling, slow burning "The Way You Walk;" you almost fear for Weathers, he seems so vulnerable and wrapped up in a tenuous lovers embrace. He broadens the palate to include social (in)justice on and racial identity on  "Street Talk" and "Star of Sufferation" with no loss of intensity.

Weathers band, including several of LKJ's key players, lays down a tight, smoking groove. Guitarist John Varnom is the ringer, and his slinky, almost verbal leads wrap each song in an outrageously sexy soul-blues embrace. Vivian Weathers struck gold in 1978, and anyone lucky enough to locate a copy of Bad Weather can share the wealth.

***

You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

Steve Cropper, Pop Staples, Albert King are Jammed Together.

By Carl Hanni

Here's another good one from the never-ending list of worthy records that never really got their due.

Jammed Together is a Stax Records all-star throw-down loaded with with heavy hitters; a loose, relaxed mutual appreciation society of giants enjoying each other's chops. This practically lost burner from 1969 fronts three of Stax's hottest pickers (Steve Cropper, Albert King and Pop Staples) with an air-tight backing band and a shifting line-up of A-list in-house producers. Various combinations of Al Bell, Issac Hayes, Al Jackson, David Porter, Booker T Jones, Terry Manning, Homer Banks and others all take turns group producing, a guaranteed head-turner for discerning crate diggers and analog devotees looking for a warm, vinyl fix.

Three vocal numbers - one each from the three principals - are trumped by seven instrumentals, where the real sparks fly. Albert King, for one, seldom sounded better. His unbelievably agile, sweet but stinging leads propel "Big Bird," "Trashy Dog" "Opus De Soul," "Homer's Theme" and "Knock On Wood" into soul-blues nirvana. Steve Cropper is, of course, as steady as they come, tastefully blasting away on the same tracks and putting a real fire under King's mighty feet. But Pop Staples and his patented tremolo and vibrato-laden guitar may be the unexpected ringer and perfect foil for these other two giants; his laid-back, shimmering style has just the spongy flex that these tracks need to achieve maximum lift-off.

None of this would be nearly as essential if their rhythm section wasn't as ready to rock and soul as they were, but the unnamed players split the difference between rocking soul and rocking blues, and Jammed Together comes down on the soul side of the equation. They may be unnamed but they sure sound familiar; anyone want to bet that's Al Jackson Jr. and Duck Dunn, brother MG's, on at least some if not all of the tracks?

There's real joy and a sense of playfulness in these warm, dynamic grooves, produced by a fraternity of players and producers with a rich shared history and absolutely nothing to prove. Jammed Together beats the super-star-jam curse hands down and really doesn't care if you know about it or not. And there-in lies much of the appeal: Jammed Together is simultaneously humble and thrown together, and supremely well crafted and full of bravado. Kind of like Stax Records itself.

You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com. 

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

GUEST STARS, GUITARS AND SALSA: Wiyos on the Bob Dylan Summer Tour, Pt. 3

Willie Nelson is royalty! Bob Dylan smiles! When's the next tour?!?

BY CARL HANNI

August 11, Tucson, AZ: Of all possible places for a band to spend five nights in the middle of a summer tour, Austin, TX, is surely one of the most prime. And indeed, the road gods smiled on The Wiyos, and gave us five nights in a big house off Lamar on the South side all to ourselves after, during and before gigs in Houston, Austin, Corpus Christi and Dallas, including two full days off. Our host (an Austin musician friend of The Wiyos' Michael Farkas), his wife and kids were on holiday at just the perfect moment for us to turn it into a home-base; a very good thing, considering how oppressively hot and humid it was at every turn in Texas.

Arriving late Sunday (8/2) after a drive from Houston, we had the whole next day to run errands, hit thrift stores and try and avoid spending the tour profit in record stores. Highlights: Cura's for lunch, and a dip in Barton Springs at sunset. There's no way to overstate how awesome the huge, spring-fed public pool of Barton Springs is; Austinians of every stripe flocked there by the hundreds and there's still plenty of space. I got to hang out with the fabulously talented Austin musician Graham Reynolds (Golden Arm Trio, etc.) for a Texas BBQ dinner and his usual high level of discourse.

Tuesday's show was at Dell Diamond in the sprawling suburban city of Round Rock, just north of Austin. The Wiyos played a great set looking straight into a blazing sun to a huge, happy, crispy crowd. These folks were ready to party, and the show had a festive atmosphere, despite the local coppers actually busting people for pot in the crowd and - I kid you not - dragging some off in handcuffs. Apparently Johnny Law hadn't heard that WILLIE NELSON was playing, but the crowd sure knew; these were Willie people through and through. I hung with Wammo from Asylum St. Spankers, Graham Reynolds and local audio tech and musician Buzz, and soaked it up from out front with all the happy, hot people.

Willie Nelson is royalty everywhere, but he's the mayor, governor, president and potentate all rolled into one in Texas, especially in Austin and Dallas. Everyone wants a little piece of Willie; everyone feels like they own a little piece of Willie; and he manages, in his own Zen-like way, to give enough of himself that everyone seems satisfied. This is sort of the cowboy hat version of the loaves and fishes; no matter how much Willie gives, there's always more to give. His show was actually a double-header of Texas royalty, as the venerable Ray Benson of Asleep At The Wheel, another legendary Texas icon, sat in for the whole set, rocking his Telecaster and grinning up a storm. Boy, is he tall. The crowd went bananas, and stayed that way.

Bob Dylan, perhaps taking cue from Willie, also had an ace up his sleeve; local guitar hero Charlie Sexton, an alumnus of previous Dylan bands and recordings, sat in for most of Dylan's set. He totally rocked up "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum," reproducing his original licks from Love and Theft. Sexton produced an interesting chemical reaction on stage; not only did he add a hot layer of lead guitar over everything he played on, but he spent quite a bit of the show inching into closer and closer proximity to Bob on-stage, unlike everyone else in Dylan's band, who generally kept their distance.

But as Sexton got closer and closer, locking eyes with Dylan, Dylan actually started to mug back at Sexton, executing a series of subtle feints, shoulder rolls, bug-eyes and - HOLD THE PRESSES!! - an actual, face splitting, ear-to-ear grin that seemed to light up the entire stage like a torch for about 2 seconds. Now, in most artists a single grin might not be front page news, but Dylan generally seems pretty detached and sometimes a bit dour on stage. This one grin, though, was so full of genuine mirth and (momentary) good cheer that... well, it made me feel a little different about the man. It broke through the surface, and kind of made the tour.

After that...

Corpus Christi was absurdly hot and humid, and put The Wiyos in an even hotter on-stage oven in front of a fairly modest and sun-stunned, rough looking crowd. The ball park was beautiful, but the setting was desolate, situated in a totally decrepit industrial area that wasn't even coolly decrepit, just ugly. On the other hand, they had a POOL just behind and to the right of the stage; Wiyos Parrish and Joe Bass and I lounged around in the pool with Willie Nelson playing 40 yards away; ah, that's the life. A full moon shined like a sky-lamp, illuminating our way back to Austin by midnight.

On Thursday Parrish and I hit Waterloo Records for a few used vinyl scores (The Gossip, Brother Jack McDuff, John Hammond, 3 Mustaphas 3, more) while the band took care of the never ending errands and we convened for a fabulous meal at Polvo's.

My last day on the road with The Wiyos was less than scintillating, but we all do what we have to do, and what I had to do was stay behind with the tour van at the Freightliner repair shop in Austin for repairs while the band caught a ride to Dallas/Grand Prairie with Nevada Newman, another Asylum St. Spanker. I didn't get on the road till 4 pm, just in time to catch some crap traffic out of town, and it was almost 8 pm by the time I hit Dallas, long after The Wiyos' and Willie's sets. Oh well. I got in a final, fabulous meal (thank you DEGA!), said some good-byes to the promoter folks from JamUSA and some stage crew, and we beat it to a hotel. The band was up and out and on their way to Lubbock by 8 am and I caught a noon-time flight back to Tucson.

The Wiyos went on to Albuquerque and have a few shows in S. California, ending 8/16 in Stateline, NV, at Lake Tahoe. The Phoenix show on 8/11 was cancelled due to heat (what DID they expect in Phoenix in August?); instead of being at the show, I'm here writing about the tour.

Back home. To the heat, the routine, the fish tacos, the sunsets. I love it here.

But still: hey Wiyos, when's the next tour?

***

For Wiyos tour video blogs, see:

http://www.thewiyos.com

http://www.myspace.com/thewiyos

***

Carl Hanni, a music industry publicist, record collector and club deejay based in Tucson, regularly blogs for Blurt.

RAIN, GOD, AND MORE VINTAGE GEAR: Wiyos on the Bob Dylan Summer Tour, Pt. 2

By Carl Hanni

August 4, Austin, TX: Fourteen days into a eighteen day run with NYC's The Wiyos across the country on the Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson/John Mellencamp summer tour. We're in Austin with a day off as part of a seven day/five show Texas mini-tour; a Texas five-step. The band jumped off the tour last weekend for two days to fly to Portland, OR, to play Pickathon, a study in contrasts for sure. I drove the van from Atlanta to Houston via Orange Beach, AL, where I hooked up with the Two Man Gentlemen Band, the fill-in openers for the tour on July 31.

Making good time, I dropped into New Orleans for lunch at Coop's on Sunday, which always has a good mix of locals and tourists who have strayed in off Decatur. This is the first time I've been to N.O. since Katrina; missing roofs, caved in houses and desolate looking streets can be seen from I-10, but downtown and the French Quarter look (and smell) pretty much the same. New Orleans is still, blessedly, New Orleans, in its humid, fetid, crazy-ass, dysfunctional glory.

The tour continues to unfold with its military-like precision. The marshalling of multiple semi-trucks full of gear, rigging, lights, staging and catering is carried out by a huge crew of road-tested veterans, many of whom have been with the various headliners for years or even decades. With separate production crews for Dylan, Mellencamp and Nelson, promoter staff for each show (often the same from show to show), a huge local production crew at each venue, plus security and catering staff AND three sets of band members (not counting The Wiyos) this is a huge rolling operation with many intertwined parts. After 2 weeks I'm getting a grip on who's-who, but still find someone new to meet each day that's been with the tour from day one. The Wiyos, with our five guys (including myself), are like guppies swimming with the big fish. But the tour has been great for the band so far, and they have been getting a good response to their opening half-hour set each night, making new friends and fans at each stop, selling CDs and planting themselves in the mind's eye of tens of thousands of music fans coast to coast.

The uniformity of the production is both necessary and terribly impressive, but the flavor of each city, crowd and venue comes through loud and clear.

Durham was a beautiful, urban/downtown ball park with a lively crowd that was ready to party, rock-concert style. Afterwards the band was put up by local friends, fellow musicians; a living room jam session kept everyone hopping till after midnight. Simpsonville, SC, outside Greenville, was a rolling green park of a venue in the heart of the conservative South, with a relatively sedate crowd that seemed a little less impressed with The Wiyos than other crowds; polite more than enthusiastic. A local evangelical gospel choir appeared backstage to join Willie for "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" and another couple of numbers; with their black suits and shoes and starched white shirts, they hung out outside backstage, seemingly completely peaceful in the crushing heat and humidity. A newscaster for the local Fox News affiliate was broadcasting live from the front gate and interviewed The Wiyos after the set for a spot on the 10 p.m. news. We camped at a local state park after the show, woken up at 7 a.m. by the first (but not the last) rain of the day. Rain has been a constant in the last couple of weeks; there may be a day or two that it hasn't.

The Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Alpharetta, just north of Atlanta, was blessedly a covered venue, and afforded the band our first, actual (air conditioned!) green room backstage, timely respite from the rain and humidity and general funkiness of The Wiyos' sturdy Freightliner van. Various friends and ladyfriends of the band appeared from Asheville and elsewhere, a mid-tour mini-reunion to help the band remember what life is like Off The Tour.

The band flew out at a very early 6 am for their shows at Pickathon, while I drove the van to Orange Beach for my rendezvous with the Two Man Gentlemen Band. The venue is an amphitheatre situated in a huge entertainment complex of shops, amusement park attractions and hotels on to the Alabama Gulf Coast, just off the beach. The area is incredibly lush and beautiful, half bayou and half not, with massive, kudzu- and creeper-draped trees dwarfing everything around. Churches in the area (and there are LOTS of churches) vie for having the most clever slogans on their signage out front - "Here comes the Son," "Beat the heat: instructions inside" and more witty come-ons. It's nice to see a little humor mixed in with their efforts to keep us out of hell; I wonder how many local church goers will be at the show tonight? Is this still "the devil's music" being played, or have we gotten past that?

The Gentlemen play a knockout set to a soggy crowd in the persistent rain, sign CDs and give away kazoos before hitting the road for an all-night drive to Nashville. Willie and Mellencamp play their standard sets, Willie spreading the love like only he can do. I finally get to see my second full set by Bob Dylan, whose voice is pretty rough at first, but warms up after a couple of songs. The band is incredibly tight, with guitarists Denny Freeman and Stu Kimball curling around each other like snakes in a pit and long-time bass player Tony Garnier swinging on the bottom end. Dylan is really mixing up the set-list from show to show, drawing on maybe 30 + songs for the tour. Tonight he plays "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding"), "Thunder on the Mountain," "It Ain't Me Babe," "The Levee's Gonna Break" and others before the standard three-song encore of "Like a Rolling Stone," "Jolene" and "All Along the Watchtower." Judging from a couple of his splay-legged leans into his keyboard, it looks like he might be having some fun on-stage; it's really sort of hard to tell, though.

After a Sunday sprint in the Freightliner that took me across parts of Alabama, all of lower Mississippi, Louisiana and into Texas (via New Orleans), I reach my nadir of the tour: Beaumont, Texas. I'm sure the people of Beaumont love Beaumont, and most folks were pretty decent all around, but I also got such the "you're not from these here parts" vibe from some of the locals at dinner (not the sweet waitress, thanks hon) that I almost had to check my calendar to see what decade it was.

Really guys: I'm not here to take, change or corrupt anything; just passing through and spending money. If you think I'm weird, you should see my friends. It all felt very Easy Rider for a moment. It's so humid that my glasses fog over when I step out of my hotel at 7 am.

After grabbing the weary Wiyos at the Houston airport (they knocked 'em dead at Pickathon, no sleep) we head to the beautiful (covered, thank you) Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion so they can jump back on the tour for the final twelve shows. They play through the exhaustion for a great set to a huge crowd and we hit the road for a late-night drive to Austin, for three evenings' worth of respite under a friendly roof, doing errands, hitting thrift stores, taking a dip in Barton Springs, and chowing down on Tex-Mex cooking (including my first salsa since leaving Tucson over two weeks ago). Time off in Austin: the perfect antidote to road burn.

Next: shows in Austin, Corpus Christi and Dallas/Grand Prairie.

***

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

ROAD-DOGS, HEAT, AND VINTAGE GEAR: Wiyos on the Dylan/Nelson/Mellencamp Tour

By Carl Hanni

July 27, outside Duck, Outer Banks, NC: Leaving New York City four days ago in a driving rain, the signs of rock ‘n' roll start immediately, with billboards for Creed and AC/DC. If this is a signifier of some sort, it's a bit obtuse: we're off for 2 1/2 weeks of touring, and there will be some rock ‘n' roll, but little of the hard-rock varietal.

I'm here on a 17 day run with The Wiyos, NY-based vaudevillian string band extraordinaire. They are booked to play 28 out of 33 dates as the opening act on the Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp summer tour, which started in Sauget, IL, July 2, and finishes in Stateline, NV, August 16. With a couple of exceptions, the tour is playing minor league ball parks/stadiums all across the country. I jumped on the tour five days ago, in Lakewood, NJ, and will ride it through the show in Dallas (really Grand Prairie) TX August 7, as Wiyos tour manager, publicist, merch wrangler and all-around boy-Friday. I'm delighted to be here in such fine company and out of my scorching home base of Tucson. Not that it's much cooler out here, as I soon realize...

The Wiyos played to a remarkably enthusiastic bunch of die-hards the other evening at First Energy Park in Lakewood, bunched up in front of the stage trying for some respite from the downpour, faces framed by a rainbow coalition of colored ponchos and soggy cowboy hats. The Wiyos have 1/2 hour every tour stop, from 5:30 till 6 pm, to play, make new fans, greet friends from the stage and put in a plug for their new CD. Then there's a quick 10 minute turnaround before Willie Nelson takes the stage for an hour, followed by John Mellencamp, followed by Bob Dylan. The exact same routine every show, different venue, for 6 weeks. The whole production is as smooth and tight as a long-running Broadway show or a military parade. This is a professional operation in every possible detail.

After three shows (Lakewood, NJ; Aberdeen, MD, outside of Baltimore; and Norfolk, VA), truisms and patters quickly manifest. For one thing, the catering is incredible. Cast and crew are fed lunch and dinner every day, and it's had to overstate how great the spread is. Copious, endless amounts of tasty, healthy and inventive food, drinks and deserts appear twice daily, including fruit, cheeses, coffee and teas, soup, salads, cold drinks, multiple deserts, vegetarian fare, vitamin supplements and more. I mean, really.

So far, the crowds have really been digging The Wiyos. They generally play to 600-800 concert-goers in front of the stage, with thousands more filing in and spread around the bleachers. Most in the crowd may not know who they are coming in, but they sure do going out, and CD and t-shirt sales have been steady. The Wiyos, versed in everything from busking on street corners to playing to sit-down crowds in theaters, know how to work a crowd, and needless to say they are making the most of a fortunate situation that most other acts would love to find themselves in. They do what they need to do and what they have been hired to do: connect with the crowd and warm them up, give them a taste of what they are all about (think a 1930's vaudeville act crossed over with a modern take on old-timey music), then bust everything off the stage lightening fast and make way for Willie. Come back the next day and do it again.

For the most part everyone on the tour (to one degree or another) is friendly, helpful and supportive. Production and promotion staff, stage crews, sound and security are all working like clockwork. As the next act up after The Wiyos, we see lots of Willie's people, especially his stage crew and harmonica player Mickey Raphael, a prince of a guy. Members of Mellencamp's and Dylan's band have been stopping by to chat and talk shop. The Wiyos definitely have a curiosity factor going for them: who are these young lads with the vintage clothes, washboard, standup bass, steel and resonator guitars?

Willie's show is as loose, casual and intimate as a camp-fire sing-along for 10,000 people. He plays the hits ("Crazy," "Nightlife," "Whiskey River") and the crowd sings along and revels in his Willienesss. Willie Nelson occupies a completely unique space in the popular culture, and it is this: EVERYONE digs Willie Nelson. How does he do this, the great leveling of all the country into his corner?

Well, he's WILLIE NELSON, and no one else is. As has been pointed out over the years, he could probably run for president and win in a landslide.

John Mellencamp's show is rocking. The volume goes up - way up - when he takes the stage, and all of a sudden we're at a rock concert. Girls in halter-tops and skin tight jeans suddenly appear, butts suddenly begin to boogie. This guy has enormous populist appeal, a bunch of hit songs that are also cultural signifiers, and an ace band. When he's not on stage he hangs out in his Airstream trailer (the one with the motorcycle in front) in the holding area in back.

I've only seen one entire Dylan show so far, in Norfolk. We watch the show with The Maybelles, friends of The Wiyos that appeared just in time for the beginning of his set. Bob looks incredibly natty in his tailored country gentlemen attire and white, flat-brimmed hat. His band, a casually road-worn bunch of veterans, is almost as sharp in matching white jackets and black hats. Dylan's voice is somewhere between well seasoned, ragged and deliciously ravaged in a sexy, older guy kind of way. In Norfolk he kicked in with "Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35" from Blonde on Blonde; in Aberdeen it was "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" from that same joyful record from 1966, a good sign for sure. Tonight's songs run from older numbers like "Highway 61 Revisted," "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Like a Rolling Stone" to more recent ones like "The Levee's Gonna Break" and "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum" plus "Jolene" (from his new Together Through Life CD).

The title seems telling; if there's anyone we've been together through life with in America, it's Bob Dylan. He switches from guitar to keyboard; he cues his band with glances; he does not, of course, address the audience. Dylan's "stage presence" in front of an audience is much like it is off stage, an impenetrable wall that only lets out or takes in exactly what Dylan chooses. He's earned the right to be and do exactly as he chooses to be and do. The quality of his song-writing both over the years and in the last several years pretty much puts him beyond reproach.  What you take away from one of these shows is in a large part determined by what you bring to it; he's certainly not going to tell you what to feel or think.

We're here on the coast relaxing with a couple of days off before picking up the tour again tomorrow in Durham. Will report more down the road.

***

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

Please vote.


Let's consider who deserves to be on the Mt. Rushmore of Funk.
That's Four Faces of Funk, etched on a monument somewhere suitably funky.

That could be a debate right there; where to put this monument to the monumentally funky. Memphis, New Orleans, Detroit? James Brown's front yard? And what are we going to call it? Mt Funkmore? The Funk Rock?

We could also cheat a little and perhaps add a Fifth Face of Funk. As I'm hoping to make this a collective effort, I hope you will jump in with an opinion and an argument.

The criteria would have to be that they are a true founding father and inventor, not just an innovator--we're talking about the building blocks, the very Fabric of Funk. It's not enough to just be an icon to make it to Mt. Rushmore; they have to be a master, a member of a small and select circle that is the well-spring of everything funky that came after them.  

So. It seems pretty irrefutable that James Brown and George Clinton deserve two of the slots. Is this even debatable? Between the two of them they pretty much represent the two major rivers of funk of the last forty + years. Brown is the sine qua non of funk, the original master that took R&B, dropped the 4/4 in favor of an off beat and presto! bingo! originated funk as we know it. The popping or slapping bass, chunky guitar, horn charts that jump in and out and call and response vocals are still being worked out today. Brown produced a body of work, on record and in performance both, that will most likely remain untouchable in it's quality, quantity and influence. So, there's one.

George Clinton took Brown's R&B generated funk and turned it on its ear, then inside out and back again. P-funk sometimes sounds like funk in slow-mo, other times in like funk in a mescaline and steroid frenzy, or Sesame Street with huge hair and shoes and synths doubling the crazy Space Bass line while a whole extended families of vocalists and players jump in for a never ending interstellar houseparty. Clinton and his cohorts in Parliament, Funkadelic, Brides of Funkenstein, etc. brought the Freak to Funk. The musical landscape will never be the same. I say there's two. You may say different.

Where do we go from there? Consider the candidates: Sly Stone, Issac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Bootsy Collins, Fela, The Meters (groups are problematic for Mt Rushmore), Prince and...who? No women? Does Miles Davis qualify due to his mind-blowing early 70s recordings? How about the producers (Norman Whitfield, Willie Hutch, etc.)? Can we nominate Stax Records as a whole (including the MGs), or the Funk Bros., or the whole city of New Orleans? Was Thriller a funk album? How about Madonna's bubble-gum funk? Or Latin Funk? Are there any Brits or Jamaican's that qualify? Any DJs? Hip hop artists?

I'm going with Sly Stone for the third spot. His biggest hits are both true funk classics and true cultural signifiers, his performances (Woodstock!) the stuff of legend and his mixture of rock and funk smashed thru a boundary desperately in need of smashing. He also had hits - lots of them. I say Sly qualifies for the number three spot.

It's gets pretty complex from here and will naturally devolve into personal taste. You could certainly make arguments for Hayes, Mayfield, Wonder Fela and Prince. "Shaft" was such monster that it practically qualifies Hayes by itself, but spotty quality control and a propensity for ballads dilutes Hayes funk factor. Curtis Mayfield qualifies with an abundance of great songs and an intelligence and social conscience that perfectly mirrors the revolutionary times he was recording in. Ditto Stevie Wonder, who revolutionized the sound of funk in a peerless series of hits in the 70s that also had the social consciousness down. Fela's influence and world-wide popularity are hard for American's to fathom, but he really was an funk ambassador to the world. And Prince? Well, he brought funk into the modern world, sexed it up to a delirious degree and blew through all the boundaries between rock, pop, funk, soul, R&B, and hip hop.

One peer has already made an impassioned argument for Bootsy Collins. Who have we missed? Who deserves to be up there with the Godfather?

If you please, vote with your opinion on who the Four Figures of Funk might be - or a fifth, if it pleases you. I'm leaving the fourth spot open, and hoping for a Funk Epiphany.  

You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com. 

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

Mel Brown Greases the Grease

Mel Brown passed away just as this edition of Sonic Reducer was posted. R.I.P. to a class act.

If you've ever wondered what greasy blues funk sounded like in downtown L.A . in '68 or '70, you're in luck; Mel Brown is here to show and tell you with Eighteen Pounds of Unclean Chitlins, subtitled And Other Greasy Blues Specialties. Needless to say this is a vintage vinyl release we're waxing about here. It has, amongst it's many analog and old-school virtues, one of the best two sided covers ever; a platter of very greasy chitlins and sides on the front, the same plate ploughed thru on the back, capped with a cigarette butt in the middle.

Guitar player Mel Brown has had a long career and is still putting out records, playing blues festivals, etc. Eighteen Pounds..., released in 1973, collects eight previously released tracks of high-grade, vintage funk blues that lives and breathes the murky air of Los Angeles. Everything you need to know about the grooves is right there on the cover and in the songtitles; subtle it's not, greasy it is.

 "Chunk A Funk" is the first song, and if it sounds like they're telescoping here, directing you in a greasy direction, well, right on brother. Both "Chunk A Funk" and "W-2 Withholding" feature the great Clifford Solomon on tenor sax and the twin caveats "unidentified organ, bass and drums. Recorded in Los Angeles, probably early 1968." How unassailably cool is that?  To be so out-there that you don't know the when or the who?

Subtly is not Mel Brown's favorite mode, at least not back in these days. As a guitar player he leads and punches hard, alternating between super juiced, frantic bursts of rocked-up blues neck wrangling, and, occasionally, more laid-back, groove-y runs. As a band-leader he knows when to back off and let's the rest of the crew stir the pot, although he's typically in the middle of things.  The two lead off tracks on side 2, "Time For A Change" and "Good Stuff," are brassy funk jazz, with pumping horns and Jimmy Davis' or Cliff Coulter's funky organ and piano pushing the groove. I love the way you can just feel the grease and exhaust and dirt of the mean streets of Los Angeles working it's way into the grooves of the record. There's something definitive here, a captured feel of time and place, with Watts burning in the background, and Woodstock just over the horizon, and these guys just want to party. Think these boys partied hard? I'd bet on it. The whole thing is loosey-goosey even when it's tight, definitely Out There even when it's actually In There.

The centerpiece is the title track and has be heard to be believed. "Eighteen Pounds of Unclean Chitlins" is an extended psychedelic mind-fuck, 12 minutes of warped and tweaked guitar, minimal drums and Cliff Coulter's wheezing, junked-out organ. The effects (other than a wah wah pedal and generous use of an echoplex) seem to be either Brown or an engineer manipulating the volume on his guitar, creating playful, super-low-tech psych-blues dub. I found myself wondering...honestly, sorry, what can I say...what kind of drugs were they taking? Just booze and cigarettes and coffee and greasy food? You think? "I'd Rather Suck My Thumb" is almost as good, and has such a great title that it could be Brown delivering pizzas and still be a classic. Jazz cat Herb Ellis shows up for the final track, "Home James."

FYI, Mel Brown's slippery first record, Chicken Fat, has been reissued on vinyl by Euphoria. And, needless to say, both the title and songs are suitably greasy.

The Moody Blues: when did they get hip? Are they hip? When did I get hip to them?

As a young rock'nroll guy we all just assumed that these guys were total squares, and were instinctively dismissive. When your musical world is bracketed by Alice Cooper on one side and The Allman Brothers on the other, it's easy to make those kind of judgments about anyone whose ambitions we couldn't comprehend. So, other than occasionally hearing "Nights in White Satin" or "Ride My See-Saw" on the radio, I tuned out The Moody Blues for a few decades or so.

Somewhere along the recent way I ended up with three releases from their golden era of the late 60s, Days of Future Past, On The Threshold of a Dream and In Search of the Lost Chord. It was revelation time. The revelation was, essentially, how intoxicating the Moodies could be at their best, while still being a bit wanky or fussy at other times. Most of side two of Days of Future Past is seductive, although  "Nights in White Satin" is a little creepy, and side one is overburdened with concept and too much of The London Festival Orchestra. On The Threshold of a Dream has several terrific songs, a lovely psychedelic cover (all 3 of these have great covers) and an impressive display of mustached sartorial splendor on the inner sleeve. But the capper was In Search of The Lost Chord; specifically side one of 1968's In Search of The Lost Chord.
 
These five tracks and the mood-setting spoken intro are top-shelf late 1960s British egg-head psych pop. This is heady stuff: cosmologically romantic, richly evocative and other-worldly. Along with the sophisticated arrangements and dreamy vocals, the sweetener that makes all the difference is the mellotron that Mike Pinder and Justin Hayward used to evoke that lovely, imagistic other-worldliness. Remember the mellotron, the lush, symphonic sounding cross between an organ and an early synthesizer? It was uniquely suited to the Moodies forte. Other than the Moody Blues and the Rolling Stones on "20,000 Light Years From Home," early King Crimson were probably the most well known act (that I can remember) to use it liberally, and it was quickly eclipsed by the more versatile synthesizer. But here on "House of Four Doors," "Legend of a Mind" with it's "Timothy Leary's theory" refrain, "The Best Way to Travel" from side 2 and other tracks, The Moody Blues succeed at creating or portal to another dimension in sound, a doorway to step back and forth between worlds through. This is tricky to pull off, and if they don't always succeed, at least they always aim high and seem honest and thoughtful.

Even at their most sublime The Moody Blues have The Academy wafting off them like tweedy pipe smoke. Perhaps they got together in art school, like so many other British bands of the 60s? But while the Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks would have been slumming it and ditching school, The Moodies would have been the serious, probably older guys who dressed up not down, had steady girlfriends, read music, rehearsed like mad and took it all seriously.
Visual clues to that end show in the inner sleeve of On The Threshold of a Dream. Other British bands at the time were preening in rock star boots and loud shoes from from Carnaby Street or King's Row, but the five guys in the Moody Blues, dressed to kill in leather jackets and tasteful dark velvet, are all sporting shiny loafers. With buckles. Expensive, stylish loafers, for sure, but still loafers. The loafer wearing Moody Blues didn't seem dangerous or revolutionary or any threat to the status quo back in the day; perhaps our parents might even have liked them. Well, I still like Alice Cooper (and Black Flag and Sonic Youth and Smegma), but it sure was a relief to grow up and out and be open to anything across the board, regardless of the strict dictates (as we perceived them) of rock'nroll, which now looks more restrictive and status quoted than the adventurous, tuneful  psychedelia of The Moody Blues. Or maybe that was just adolescence predictably throwing an elbow into the ribs of middle age, because that's what adolescence does.

And, just as I'm finishing this I'm listening to On The Threshold of a Dream and thinking that it might be as good as In Search of The Lost Chord. It's still revelation time. 

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

Cut-ups
Carl Hanni

Since sometime back in the 1980s, sonic provocateurs NEGATIVLAND have
been releasing their own records and records by like-minded acts on
their SEELAND RECORDS imprint. They have contributed mightily to both
the spreading out and subversion of audio culture, and in doing so
ended up in the litigious middle of the on-going debate (legal and
ethical both) about copyright laws, "fair use," sampling and found and
appropriated culture. They have also released a slew of irreverent and
genre busting records by fellow travelers Bob Ostertag, Realistic,
John Oswald, Eddie The Rat, Porest, Xerophonics, the incomparable
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and many more.

Two of their juicer label releases are /Music For The Odd Occasion/
(1997) by the Aussie crew ANTEDILUVIAN ROCKING HORSE, and /In Your
Dreams/ (1995) by the Boston-area duo HEAD AND LEG. ARH members DJ2
(Paul Wain) and DJ3 (Susan King) and 3rd member/collaborator Ollie
Olsen have crafted an unruly mutt of a record that could be filed
either under "experimental" or "techno/electronic" in your local
record store, if there are any of those left. The techno/dance side is
nervous, jittery and probably too-high strung and full of deviously
annoying voices, lurid samples and dissonance for anyone not seriously
chemically whacked to do a lot of raving to. On the
conceptional/experimental side, they show much affinity for Dada (Hugo
Ball is quoted twice in the liner notes) and its Surrealist cousin,
along with a splatter-palate of samples, appropriations, cut-ups and
studio chicanery, all with the drum machine poking at it like some
meth-head fingering a head-wound. They seem to have equal amounts of
fun with their synths and drum machines as they do with their samplers
and found material. Needless to say they are cheeky, irreverent and
full of mirth. Really, why would they be on Seeland otherwise? You
don't have to be a nerd, DJ, sample rat or fair use activist to dig
their pastiche, but it certainly doesn't hurt, either. Song-titles
like "Rigorous Doughnut," "Lost Sky Daffodil," "The Third Ore Bit" and
"A Perry Mason Moment" tell you exactly nothing, thankfully. ARH have
put their time and their face where their beliefs are, meeting the
opposition head-on and sticking their neck out in a variety of
above-ground moves dedicated to their belief in the Freedom to Sample
and Use at will. Along the way they have collaborated with Damo Suzuki
of Can, The Boredoms, David Thrussell of Snog and jumped into
Negativland's fight with the RIAA, and released two more records,
Music for Transportation and Forward Into The Furniture. All in the
name of fun and freedom, bless them.

Head and Leg are Robert Pierce and Ken Lacouture, a pair of cards
playing with a deck of sonic and conceptual mischief. On /In Your
Dreams/ these cut-ups and a dozen of their pals compose, conjure, dice
and splice together 18 tracks loosely arranged around a dream theme.
In addition to the usual guitars, keyboards, etc. the credits include
slapping, murmuring, spitting, bagel, grapefruit, metal cart, bathtub
and wind-up fish. Although the record is dedicated to Jorge Luis
Borges, these guys pretty obviously worship The Firesign Theater, and
that works well for them. These are basically sample and studio/tape
manipulated comedy skits woven together with five "dreamscapes."  They
take venomous aim at commercial radio with the stupendously sarcastic
classic "The Hits Keep Coming," which appropriates enough hard-rock
samples (Who, Stones, Zeppelin, etc) to keep them tied up in Copyright
Hell for a lifetime. "Poke You In The Eye" is charming silliness,
"Hey, Fat Lady" disconcerting carnival-barking surrealism, a skit
waiting for a David Lynch movie. They take time out for commercials
("The All Pain Network") and a tour of "The Womb Room." Naturally some
of these pieces work better than others; comedy is tough. But they
have a sure grasp of their studio craft and the record has a
conceptual consistency that's admirable. Like The Firesign Theater,
this is a sit and listen record, and virtually useless as any kind of
background ambiance. Do people sit and listen anymore in our
fractured, micro-byte time? Head and Leg have more in common with an
old-time radio serial than anything you would hear on the radio today,
low-power FM or pirate radio notwithstanding. If you can find the CD
and find the time, /In Your Dreams/ opens a door into a
time/place/head-space where taking the time to compose something isn't
dedicated to U2ish bombast, gangsta or singer/songwriter narcissism or
prog-rock wankiness, but something else entirely: actual
entertainment, backed up by concept, produced with great charm, humor
and perhaps even humility. What a concept.

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.

Muslimgauze

In the annals of the insanely prolific, Bryn Jones, aka Muslimgauze, may stand alone. Having produced close to 100 releases between 1982 and his death in 1999, that number (including re-issues) has now more than doubled. That puts him up (and beyond) in the rarified category of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, Bill Laswell, Bill Nelson, Jandek and other pathologically prolific musicians, most of whom can't touch the coattails of his discography.  It's actually even more impressive considering that the others were either much older at their passing or are still around and releasing records. The man was clearly driven by a profound need to create.


The volume of Muslimgauze's work is just a small part of a complex scenario. The urgency of his prolifigy was at the very least least double-edged. Obviously he had an unquelchable mass of music bottled up inside and the means to let it out. But Bryn Jones was also a man with a Cause; he was intensely, some would say militantly pro-Palestinian, and Muslimgauze was viewed by some as virtually the musical wing of the PLO. Wading into the on-going Israeli/Palestinian conflict is obviously a thorny path, but it became one of his choses ones. Jones' interests were, in fact, much broader, and included an on-going concern for issues of sovereignty, freedom, equality and justice throughout the world at large, especially in the Third and Muslim Worlds. He was a long-time student of the politics of oppression, and vocal in his support of groups that some consider freedom fighters, other terrorists. This was a stance that garnered him huge respect in some quarters and, naturally, great enmity in others.


You won't find any voices extolling any particular political cause on a Muslimgauze record, other than a occasional sampling of a newscast, speech or "ethnic" voice or snippet of music--in fact, you'll find almost no human voices at all. The politics are more inferential, but also show up prominently in song-titles and on cover art: Cout D'Etat features images of Ayatollah Kohemani on the front and Moammar Kadafi on the back, willfully provocative (some would say naive) images guaranteed to exhilarate one audience while alienating another. I certainly don't know his deepest beliefs, but we can only hope that they included a wish for freedom from oppression for ALL peoples, everywhere, irregardless of...well, anything.

 
One of electronic music's true visionaries, Muslimgauze produced a multi-tiered body of work that would take a devoted musicologist years to grapple with. As likely to be percussive as electronic, he created a new language that sucked together everything from dub, ambient, tribal and house to industrial, electro-acoustic, cut-and-paste and drone. Particularly striking are his extensive, body and soul altering forays into a highly personal fusion of Middle Eastern and North African (but also Asian, Native American, etc.) sounds, sometimes sampled and sometimes not, sometimes percussive, sometimes electronic, sometimes both; frequently harsh, sonically provocative, frequently unsettling, almost always intense, by no means for the timid. Muslimgauze's low end could cripple a crap sub-woofer, while the high end could set dogs barking blocks away. His recording mastery was intuitive and highly evolved, his musical vision seemingly endlessly hungry to create new variations.


Although he evidently spent most of a decade and a half holed up in one studio or another, he occasionally collaborated with contemporaries, including Systemwide, Apollon, Bass Communion and Sons of Arqa. He also DJ'd a bit, occasionally played live and gave interviews now and then, but it was really all about making and releasing music. He released 16 albums in 1998, and in the year of his death, 1999, there were a total of 22 releases marked Muslimgauze. He had releases on at least 32 labels.

 
Bryn Jones died suddenly, quickly, unexpectedly from a rare blood infection in 1999. Over 100 Muslimgauze records have been released since his death, some as reissues, most of it previously unreleased material. Even in death, the obsession continues. 

Every now and then a record comes along that rises above everything around it and hits the sweet spot that separates the sublime from the mediocre, good, or even great. It doesn't necessarily have to break any new ground, but it does inhabit it's particular space as perfectly as possible.  

Let us, then, take a breather from everything else and pay tribute to a sublime piece of honky tonk heaven, Ray Price's 1963 classic Night Life album.
First, a bit of back-story. Night Life first crossed my turntable as a gift from Dave Gonzalez, prime-mover of The Paladins and The Hacienda Brothers, who were  untouchable purveyors of modern day honky tonk and western soul until the untimely death earlier this year of Brothers co-founder Chris Gaffney. While hanging out with Dave, Gaff and Hacienda Brothers manager Jeb Schoonover, it became obvious that, in their estimation, honky tonk country in it's purest form was and is the qualitative equal of anything ever recorded--classical, jazz, whatever. This is not something they generally teach you in the College of Musical Knowledge. 

This is a belief, not a thesis, but if you needed to make that argument Ray Price's Night Life could certainly be Exhibit A. Moving directly off the honky tonk blue-print perfected by Hank Williams, Price and his Cherokee Cowboys deliver 12 tracks of straight-up, hard country that differs from 100s or 1000s of other similar albums only in that it's just a little bit to a lot better than most of the others. It's a pure distillation.  

Night Life is something of a concept album, or a song-cycle, revolving around the title cut; a series of songs exploring the night life and all the vagaries of the night lifestyle. Which includes plenty of opportunities for drinking, dancing, playing music, infidelity, heartbreak, remorse; the stuff of country & western music from time immemorial. Many of these are  classics, recorded before and since then by numerous artists. But seriously; show me a better version of "Night Life" and I'll eat Ray's black hat. 

The title cut incapsulates what is so right about this record. After a mood-setting spoken intro by Ray ("Well Hi neighbors!...We want to thank you for being so nice on our last record...we've chosen...songs of happiness, sadness, heartbreak, songs of the night life..."), the band kicks in with a pedal steel guitar swell that just takes your breath away. Ray steps up to the mic with his velvet voice, the band falls in behind him at a stately pace and it all just comes together. And therein lies the magic: Price's genuinely emotive voice embedded in arrangements that are absolutely not in a hurry to get anywhere. The pacing is everything, the key to the mansion, where macaroni becomes Mozart. It's subtle, methodical and sensual; this is music that really, genuinely swings. The band is so precise, so perfectly in synch that it's actually hard to imagine it getting any better. Ray and his voice, of course, are worthy of being on the Mt. Rushmore of honky tonk. Willie Nelson does a lovely version of "Night Life," but Ray Price owns it.

Ray's version of "Sittin' and Thinkin'" beats writer Charlie Rich's by a country mile, and Rich was an absolute master. I've listened to it a hundred times, and I'm sure I'll listen another hundred. Again, perfection: the steel guitar swoons, the lower register guitar (or perhaps a 6 string bass) picks out a walking groove, the supple rhythm section swings and Ray delivers the goods. "I got loaded last night/on a bottle of gin/and I had a fight/with my best girlfriend/When I'm drinking/I am nobody's friend/Baby please wait for me/until they let me out again." The band sounds both hard and soft, the pace is a leisurely amble, the destination the truth. The song-titles tell the whole story: "Lonely Street," "The Wild Side of Life," "If She Could See Me Now," "Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women." No crap strings, no corny choruses mucking everything up. The fact that Ray only wrote one track doesn't raise any heat here. Even the cover is cool, as much cocktail lounge as road-house, with Ray looking slightly amused while a couple (illicit, no doubt) nuzzle and sip cocktails. He doesn't even wear a hat in the front cover; what confidence.

It's no secret that much (most) contemporary, Nashville-based country music sounds manufactured, calculated and insincere. There are legions of rebels, eccentrics and iconoclasts in the Americana camp, of course, turning out new twists on the twang and keeping it real. But in 1963 Ray Price was before the fall, when Nashville could still be fresh, competition was more genial, gigs were plentiful and the music hadn't yet been relegated to Squaresville by the coming tide of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, James Brown, electric Miles Davis and all that came after them. Ray Price has made many more fine records over several decades, maybe some of them as good as this one. But Night Life, with it undercurrent of sensuality and blue collart dissipation, remains a high-water mark and a good primer for any songwriter and picker with a cowboy hat who wants to get really, really real and get it right.    

Sonic Reducer: The Fertile Crescent of the 90s.

Sonic Reducer returns to the fertile crescent of the late 80s - early 00s, probing for sonic caviar. Again, the disclaimer: I had a small thing to do w/the Whirlees record and did some work about 100 years ago with with The Oblivion Seekers. What can I say? Good is good.

Morning 40 Federation, Trick Nasty (2002, self-released): if there's a better drunk-funk band anywhere in the world, I want to know about it. These New Orleans gutter snipes drag R&B, funk, blues and Crescent City music hall booze-alongs into the garage, dose them with near-fatal amounts of liquor, and let them stumble back into the streets. A 365 day a year drunk-punk rent party, the 40s really do put most other garage bands out to pasture with the utter purity of their trash. Their almost militant indifference to the norms of society (work, food, clothes, other people) pretty much puts them on their own little island in the Mississippi River: the island of revels, where everyone is smashed before noon, of willful irresponsibility; a humid Saturnalia, forever showered with cheap whiskey and beer.

Sugar Plant, After After Hours (1997, World Domination): a perfectly titled release. Dreamy nocturnal ambient pop from a Japanese duo to while away the hours before dawn to. They occasionally break through the placid surface with waves of humming electric guitars and effects, and finish strong with a rumbling, feedback heavy "Brazil." This World Domination was Dave Allen's (from Gang of Four, Shriekback, etc.) label in the late 90s and early 00s-I don't believe they are affiliated with the current World Domination Records. 

The Whirlees, self-titled (1993, Schizophonic): I'm paraphrasing here, but a reviewer once described the only full release by the Salem, OR combo thusly: "If The Whirlees were a car, they would be a '73 'Cuda with a Hemi dropped under the hood and humongous side-pipes." This is true-in a paraphrased sense, of course. Thick, rumbling gobs of mid-tempo hard rock cruise through the CD like Dazed & Confused teenage traffic driving in circles on a Friday night. That's hard rock; not metal, not glam, not punk. Remove the blues from the first three ZZ Top records and fill the gap with stacks of Marshall Amps, wah-wah pedals and fuzz boxes; place under the hood of an El Camino, drop a Quaalude and add Rainier Ale; presto! The Whirlees. They buzz and lumber, they growl and howl, they occasionally pick up speed to approach take-off, they toss in a bit of "Train Kept a Rolling." They make Salem proud.

The Oblivion Seekers, self-titled (1992, T/K-Tim/Kerr): The Oblivion Seekers are Mark Sten and whoever he says is an Oblivion Seeker. This debut CD is the first in a long line of thoroughly fine records, a criminally underrated body of work that is (as far as I know) still on-going. Most Oblivion Seekers CDs morph back and forth between twin poles of  snarly, electrified rockabilly and super-charged rock & roll and more pensive, even tender material - ballads, mid-tempo numbers and the like. The first record offers that but also something different: a collection of attitude-heavy, gospel influenced material, split into collections of "Saved" and "Damned." Covers of the Carter Family, Mack Self and others sit next to Sten originals. The sound is trebly and jacked-up, with odd separations in the mix, and a hot/cold feel; it sounds both dry and drenched at the same time. Duality at work: "Roadhouse" is vintage rockabilly, while "Fine, Fine, Fine" sounds like it was mixed by David Lynch. 1993's Spirit of America is every bit as good or better, a 20 song-cycle opus that goes gold from A to Z.

Steve Fisk, 448 Deathless Days (1987, SST): for the sake of being conveniently reductive, Steve Fisk has at least three musical personas; band member (Pell Mell, Pigeonhed, etc.), the crafty producer of bands like Mudhoney, Nirvana, Beat Happening, Geraldine Fibbers and many more, and the sonically schizo auteur of solo records like 448 Deathless Days. Loaded with samples and tape manipulations, shifting syncopations and backwards beats and a dark, somewhat foreboding vibe, 448 Deathless Days is the sound of someone cutting up in the studio, indulging his darkly surreal whims. Unfettered indulgence can, of course, be a colossal wank; thankfully, Fisk has a well balanced sense of the weird, knows his way around the musty back-rooms of his gear and can make a racket and be tuneful simultaneously. Members of Screaming Trees and other pals from Seattle and Ellensburg keep it coming.

Steven Jesse Bernstein, Prison (1992, Sub Pop): Steve Fisk also had the unprecedented task of finishing the music and production on Prison by Seattle's poet-provocateur Steven Jesse Bernstein after he took his own life in 1991. With only one track completed, Fisk was left to intuit his way thru Bernstein's thorny mob of words, a white-knuckle life story poured out with breath-taking venom, cryptic word collage, sweet humor and bared-soul vulnerability. Summing up all the multiple shards of  Bernstein's complex persona and fucked-up life and death is pointless and impossible. He was street-wise and wise-wise and crazy and damaged/sweet and had an astounding ability to tell stories and create complex knots of images and ideas that never felt anything less than 110% genuine - there wasn't an ounce of guile in the man. The fantastic flights of fancy in "This Clouded Heart" and "Party Balloon" never wear thin, while the brutal honesty of "Face" can be hard to take; apparently it got to be to much for him, as well. 

Life Garden, Pry Open My Mouth With The Red Knife Of Heaven (1992, We Never Sleep): One of several infinitely deep, mind-altering Life Garden CDs (including Seed, Caught Between The Tapestry Of Silence & Beauty and The Hungry Void),Pry Open My Mouth... is ritual, start to finish. David Oliphant, Su Ling-Oliphant, Peter Ragan and Bil Yanok were Life Garden. Their metier was acoustic instruments, largely percussion, stringed or blown into/through, manipulated electronically, but with no synths or (on this release) samples. Bells, bowls, flutes, gongs, PVC pipe and multi-tracked voices all get the digital effects treatment to create ghostly, hypnotic soundscapes that range from unsettling to profoundly peaceful. Life Garden's mission was transformative, not entertaining; the exact opposite of emotionally neutered new age muzak, they shared a little piece of common ground with Art Ensemble of Chicago, Current 93, the tribal-industrial underground and a few top-shelf dark ambient acts. They had more in common with pre-historic cave painting and pagan, pantheistic ritual than popular music; their music seems to emanate from the very earth itself. This is the real stuff: sound as emotion, the fusing of past and present, the melting point of mind and matter in the infinite flux of the cosmos. I am, absolutely, serious.

Sonic Reducer: The Undertow of the 90s.
For the second edition of Sonic Reducer we continue to mine the undertow of the 90s (with one exception from 2004) for quality releases worth seeking out. Again, they were all originally released on CD, this time around between 1993 and 2004. Most of these acts have other recordings out, several with records every bit as good as the ones fawned over below. Disclaimer: I worked for two of these labels (Tim/Kerr and Schizophonic) with two of these bands (Pigpen and 44 Long) back in the mid 90s. 

Coyle & Sharpe, On The Loose (1995, 2 13 61 Records): Coyle & Sharpe, the original prankster duo, ran amazingly surreal routines on innocent passers-by in the streets of San Francisco in the late 1950s, recording them with a tape machine hidden in a briefcase. They talked people (or tried to) into robbing banks, turning themselves into human leeches, herding "foot apples" and invented their own language ("Bulgravian"). These outrageously funny recordings are also snapshots of the times, a more innocent (gullible?) time (despite cold war fears) where strangers could approach strangers on the street with wacky ideas and not get automatically brushed off. For better or worse, it's hard to imagine them getting the same responses today. 

Duke McVinnie, Bugs (1992, Action Box): Bugs gets the nod over McVinnie's several other records because it's the only one I've heard. Channeling an art damaged version of seedy Los Angeles with  great humor, chaos, heartbreak and the ace poetic eye of a intelligent wastrel outsider, McVinnie hangs on the dirty boulevards with Chandler, Ellroy, Bukowski and Waits. Smokey Hormel plays guitar, Exene Cervenka co-wrote the self-explanatory "Drinking About You" and they mix in oboe, ocarina (?), low-fi tweaks and cut-ups with their stream of  bush-whacked jazz, gutter blues and downer folk. The whole beautiful thing was recorded straight to two track and sounds better than decades of digital disasters.

Mylab self-titled (2004, Terminus): super producer/engineer and drummer/percussionist Tucker Martine and super jazzbo keyboard whiz Wayne Horvitz and a whole bunch of their mega-talented pals gang up for a light-hearted, boundary expanding experimental project. Those pals include Bill Frisell, Robin Holcomb, Bobby Previte, Eyvind Kang and Keith Lowe. Google them. They throw just about anything with strings, keys, skins, knobs, reeds or mouthpieces into the mix and sit back and let it cook. This is "jazz" only because there's not really anything else to call it; you can just call it fun and get right to it.  Horvitz is also up to his neck in...

Pigpen, Miss Ann (1993, Tim/Kerr): Wayne Horvitz was the fulcrum around which the rest of Pigpen spun. This Seattle combo also featured progressive jazz hot-heads sax-man Briggan Krauss, drummer Mike Stone and bass player extrordinaire Fred Chalenor. They  specialized in hot, funky jazz that was both challenging and accessible. Their debut CD,Miss Ann, has seven Horvitz originals and covers by Eric Dolphy and John Zorn. They also put out a couple more full CDs, and EP and a live CD. Chalenor was also a huge part of...

Boodlers self titled (1995, Cavity Search): experimental guitar heavy-hitter Elliott Sharp leads a trio of brave souls through an effects-tweaked mine-field of twisted fret terrorism and saxophone abuse.  Cut, pasted, tortured, turned inside out and outside in in the mix, the six tracks range from short, furious pulverizations to longer, mind-bending ones that were once described (as I remember it) as sounding "like nuclei circling the head of a pin." Chalenor and drummer Henry Franzoni more than hold their own with Sharp, everyone playing like a trio of miners working their ways towards the center of the earth, one calamity at time. They released a second terrific album, Counter Fit, in 1997. 

44 Long, Collect Them All (1997, Schizophonic): sometimes something previously done to death is done so well that it simply makes it all sound fresh again. Such is the case with the debut CD by 44 Long, the first of several fine rocking-pop CDs that 44 Long main-man Brian Berg has produced since then. Berg is an almost-hidden treasure and a multi-talent; not only can he seriously play guitar with the best of them and produce a fine record, but he's got that voice: nasally, piercing and emotive. Naturally these are all beautifully crafted, catchy songs that slide from straight up pop to rock to more country and roots flavors, all with Berg's distinctive twang in voice and guitar both. Small flourishes in the production (chimes, autoharp, maracas, whistling) can make all the difference, and Collect Them All has just enough to keep it surprising and new. Fans of well-crafted roots pop and tasteful but still dangerous electric guitar look no further. 

Hashisheen: The End of Law (1998, Sub Rosa import); words by Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), music compiled by Bill Laswell. A living breathing cut-up spoken word ambient world dub other dimensional trip into the fantastical world of Hasan i Sabbah. Sabbah was the 11th century Persian mystic, heretic, revolutionary, hashish mind-control originator and founder of the "Cult of the Assassins," Marco Polo's "old man of the mountain," sending out his devotees to wreck havoc on Islam and Christianity alike from his mountain top fortress, Alamut, in central Persia. That's Iran, ya'll, a country that had an incredibly rich cultural history when European's were living in caves and hitting each other over the heads with sticks. Steeped in myth, legend and psychological sorcery, the story of The Assassins is related by William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Genesis P. Orridge, Ira Cohen, a frankly out-of-place sounding Iggy Pop and many others. Let Hasan i Sabbah have the final word: "Nothing is true -  everything is permitted." 

HUNTING IS HALF THE FUN

”Sonic Reducer” singles out worthy music and spoken-word recordings that sit somewhere outside the mainstream. This is not an obscurity contest, however, and most (but not all) of these recordings did receive a traditional release, distribution, some attempt at publicity, etc., from some recognizable small- or mid-sized labels. The point is simply to draw attention to some really good records from all sorts of genres, eras and formats. Everything in this month's column was originally released on CD in the mid- to late-nineties. They may not be easy to find, but hunting is half the fun.

DANNY FRANKEL, New Thing on Jupiter (1997, WIN Records)

Widely traveled drummer/percussionist Danny Frankel's New Thing on Jupiter is a minimalist hep-cat party-starter, perfect background music for an intergalactic beatnik cocktail lounge. Bongos, optigan, tape loops, autoharp, whistling and a Casio help spread out the spaced-out vibe. Danny is unique stylist who has toured and recorded with Jim White, Lou Reed, Rickie Lee Jones, Beck, Marianne Faithful and many others.

IRA COHEN, The Majoon Traveler (1994, Sub Rosa import)

World-traveling poet, photographer, publisher and filmmaker Ira Cohen's continent hopping spoken word CD of mystical, mythical musing was produced by the untouchable Algerian mix-master Cheb i Sabbah. Featuring cut-ups of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Angus MacLise, the Master Musicians of Joujouka, Moroccan street recording and other deep thinkers and players. Friend and contemporary of William S. Burroughs, Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin (who The Majoon Traveler is dedicated to), Ira is a true original: a brusk, no-bullshit-allowed mystic with a deep, Jewish-Brooklyn baritone.

LUTHER RUSSELL, Down at Kits (1999, Cravedog)

One-man funk factory Luther Russell drops a mother-lode of smooth, dubby instrumental funk that mixes up Memphis, New Orleans and Kingston, cocktail lounges, roadhouses and a touch of sublime muzak. Luther did the major-label two-step with The Freewheelers in the early 90s, then moved up to Portland, where he left a huge mark before eventually returning to LA. He figures hugely in the next record...

FERNANDO, Pacoima (1998, Cravedog)

Born in Argentina, raised in the San Fernando Valley barrio of Pacoima (home of Ritchie Valens), living in Portland, Fernando Viciconte has a string of superb releases. Pacoima is really something special: sung entirely in Spanish (except for one track), it's a mix of rock en Español, Tex-Mex, Casio-twiddling tangos, gutsy ballads and Farfisa-driven rockers that could be lost tracks by ? and The Mysterians, Sam the Sham or the Sir Douglas Quintet. Producer Luther Russell gives it a kinetic, live-wire feel, and plays most of the instruments, sans some of the guitar, trumpet and pedal steel.

THE GONE ORCHESTRA, Begone (1995, self released)

If Sun Ra's Arkestra added low-fi FX and dipped into boogie-woogie and boozy blues along with their outrageous space jazz? Well, actually they did. But Gone Orchestra do it really well, too. This Portland combo is thick with iconoclastic personalities and sonic tinkerers, including a few affiliated with he Smega collective of cultural contrarians. If Duke Ellington was smoking crack while making records it might come out like this...

CRASH WORSHIP, Triple Mania II (1994, Charnel House)

In a savvy move, Crash Worship pared their monumental, primordial percussion assaults down to shorter, digestible pieces, separated everything in the mix and made a CD of actual song-like material. And they do it with out losing any of their menace or psychic heavy-osity. The provocative cover is vintage Crash Worship: art inspired by Henry Darger's pan-sexual waifs,  rendered in full-color etched copper plating.

IAN SHOALES, I Gotta Go (1997, 2.13.61)

Tart-tongued, sharp-witted and incredibly verbally agile, comedic social commentator Ian Shoales sprints through 24 short, tongue twisting subjects ("Neo-Literacy," "Boomerville," "Elvitude" etc.), all ending with his trademark "I gotta go." These 24 tracks were recorded between 1985 and 1995, and reflect the cultural landscape of the Regan and Clinton eras; we can only imagine what he would make of the current Bush/Cheney/Carlyle Group-led on-going fiasco. Unlike many spoken-word recordings, it holds up under repeat listens.

UTAH CAROL, Wonderwheel (1999, Stomping Ground Publishing)

On Wonderwheel, the Chicago-based duo of Grant Birkenbeuel and JinJa Davis make tight, deadpan, insanely catchy folky rock with brief, funky instrumental interludes. Something eerie and possibly dangerous lies just below the surface, while the top side is smooth and user friendly. They have since released two more CDs, Comfort for the Traveler in 2002 and Rodeo Queen in 2007. On this first release Utah Carol manage to sound completely original without actually breaking any tangibly new territory, which is notable into itself.

RUBE WADDELL, Hobo Train (1996, Vaccination)

Junkyard blues, drunken sea-chanteys, depression-era calls to arms, homemade instruments, debauchery, anarchy and pork-pie hat wearing surrealism. Named after the legendary early 20th century baseball player, ambulance chaser and boozer, Hobo Train is the first of several outlandish CDs this Bay Area  four-hat has released. Rude Waddell are pretty much the ultimate house-party band. As long as your house has big holes in the walls, a dirt floor and is well away from any neighbors?

NEW COAT OF PAINT: SONGS OF TOM WAITS (2000, Manifesto)

Andre Williams, Knoxville Girls, Dexter Romweber, Botanica, Preacher Boy and others remake, retool and rethink 14 of Tom Waits' songs. A trio of ballads by Carla Bozulich, Sally Norvell and Eleni Mandell anchor the center of the record. But check Lydia Lunch and Nels Cline sliming their way through "Heartattack and Vine" and Screamin' Jay Hawkins completing owning "Whistlin' Past The Graveyard" to see why this is a superior collection.

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He hosts the vinyl-only “Scratchy Record Show” every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it—even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks will soon be published in Goldmine.