RAINING IN MY HEART Roosevelt Sykes and the Honeydrippers Delmark DL-642 CHICAGO PIANO Erwin Helfer Red Beans RB 010 Even in its heyday, the early 50s, the music popularly known as “Chicago blues”–traditional country blues laid over a citified rhythm section and augmented by amplified instruments–did not dominate the charts. Despite the monumental artistic achievements […]
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Marianne Faithful–Strange Weather
STRANGE WEATHER Marianne Faithfull Island Records 90613-1 Most rock crits wear the mantle of infallibility like Superman’s bulletproof long johns. Their year-end lists have a particularly definitive ring: “I’ve listened to ’em all, and these are the best that be” is the accepted subtext of such December tallies. But inevitably, come January, I wind up […]
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The four phases of Pink Floyd
There are at least two fun ironies in the rather ugly dispute that has separated leader-songwriter Roger Waters from his erstwhile teammates in the greatest dinosaur rock band of them all, Pink Floyd. The first is that Pink Floyd wasn’t really Roger Waters’s group at all: it was the conception and (originally) the execution of […]
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Bruce Springsteen–Tunnel of Love
TUNNEL OF LOVE Bruce Springsteen Columbia Records CBS 40999 First let’s set the stage. June 1984–Bruce Springsteen releases Born in the USA. Later that year, he becomes unofficial speech writer for both Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, as each reaches for a piece of the Springsteen zeitgeist. Pressing the flesh and kissing babies in Bruce’s […]
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The Silos–Cuba; Mofungo–End of the World, Part 2
CUBA The Silos Record Collect RC-22 END OF THE WORLD, PART 2 Mofungo Lost Records TTL87106 Rock ‘n’ roll’s original appeal to the white middle-class youth that supplied its economic viability was escape. Let’s get real gone. They call me the wanderer. We gotta get outta this place. The music, like drugs, mysticism, and later […]
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A new way to be
Where were you when I laid The foundations of the earth? . . . Who laid its cornerstone in place, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted aloud?–Job 38 : 4-7 The music was new black polished chrome, and it came across the summer like liquid night.–Jim Morrison I […]
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Replacements: rock for the wary generation
I got this bizarre queasy feeling last week while driving down Highway 61 in Minnesota. The Replacements’ sixth album, Pleased to Meet Me, was blasting through my sister’s boom box, and like most of their recent sold-out show at the Riviera, it sounded just great–more than inspirational, a little over the edge, and neither larger […]
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Big Black–Headache; Various artists–The Wailing Ultimate; The Angry Samoans–Yesterday Started Tomorrow; The Jesus and Mary Chain–April Skies
HEADACHE Big Black Touch and Go 20 THE WAILING ULTIMATE Various artists Homestead HMS 079 YESTERDAY STARTED TOMORROW The Angry Samoans PVC 6915 APRIL SKIES The Jesus and Mary Chain Reprise 9 20714-0 Ever since the parochial denizens of Sauk Centre and Zenith, respectively, gave Carol Kennicott and George Babbitt such a hard time, America’s […]
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Great noises of rock ‘n’ roll
I knew that the Replacements’ Pleased to Meet Me was a great record when I heard Paul Westerberg go “Ooooo!” It happens in the song “Alex Chilton.” It’s a very good ooooo!–classically placed, coming right after a short vocal bridge that comes after a spectacular chorus that comes after the verse, each of which has […]
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John Hiatt–Bring the Family
BRING THE FAMILY John Hiatt A&M Records A&M SP 5158 It isn’t surprising that the title of John Hiatt’s latest album takes the form of an invitation. Bring the Family is certainly Hiatt’s most inviting work ever. But the title cuts a bit deeper than mere coziness. Most of the songs on this immensely moving […]
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La Monte Young–The Well-Tuned Piano/Terry Riley–The Harp of New Albion
THE WELL-TUNED PIANO La Monte Young Gramavision 18-8701-2 (five records, CDs, or cassettes) THE HARP OF NEW ALBION Terry Riley Celestial Harmonies CEL 018/19 (two records or CDs) The liner notes for the new CD release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band refer to it as “nothing less than the most important and revealing […]
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Rock’s original cynic: Why Lou Reed will always be cool
Obviously, there is only one Lou Reed. But then again, perhaps this is not so obvious, so I’ll take it back. There are–or have been–many Lou Reeds. First there was the underground Lou, then the decadent glitter Lou, followed by the burnout Lou, the mellow Lou, the punk Lou, the jazzy Lou, and so on. […]
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Meat Puppets–Mirage
MIRAGE Meat Puppets SST Records SST 100 “The best rock ‘n’ roll,” Curt Kirkwood told Spin magazine, “reminds me of teenagers on angel dust fucking.” While Kirkwood’s vision is hardly straight out of hippie canon, it does represent an authentically 80s version of the counterculture’s dream of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll as […]
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Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band; Duke Ellington Orchestra/Count Basie Orchestra–First Time! The Count Meets the Duke; Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Max Roach–Money Jungle
DUKE ELLINGTON: THE BLANTON-WEBSTER BAND RCA Bluebird 5659-1-RB FIRST TIME! THE COUNT MEETS THE DUKE Duke Ellington Orchestra/Count Basie Orchestra Columbia Jazz Masterpieces CJ 40586 MONEY JUNGLE Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Max Roach Blue Note BT 85129 Few American popular musicians were quite as honored and lionized in their lifetime as Duke Ellington. The great […]
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Prince–Sign ‘o’ the Times
SIGN ‘O’ THE TIMES Prince Paisley Park/Warner Brothers 925577-1 The Prince perplex can be easily stated: how can someone who’s so in control be so out of control? How can the auteur of an entire scene and sound — he’s not merely made stars of his high school pals and sent most of the women […]