Shape of Things to Come - Max Frost & The Troopers

Shape of Things To Come
Max Frost & The Troopers
Tower ST 5147
1968

Is this the best album by a fictional band?   Maybe if one doesn't count the Monkees and I don't.  The Rutles come kind of close perhaps but they are a joke basically, as is Spinal Tap.  It sure beats the Partridge Family and the Archies.  This record is an offshoot of the 1968 film "Wild in the Streets" where the main character Max Frost has a band called the Troopers.  The songs "Shape of Things To Come" and "Fifty Two Per Cent" both come from the film's soundtrack where they are attributed to a group called the 13th Power (although an early credit sheet for the film lists the group as Paul Wieler (sic) and the 13th Power.)   The 13th Power had previously been known as Mom's Boys and under that name had contributed a nice song to the soundtrack of "Riot on Sunset Strip" called "Children of the Night."  The singer of the 13th Power was Paul Wibier who would go on to record the cult classic "Satan" - the theme from the film "Satan's Sadists."  Wibier also wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on this album.  The 13th Power apparently sacrificed their identity (or perhaps had it taken from them by Mike Curb) to cash in on the success of "Wild In the Streets."  Assuming they are actually playing on this record (instead of some session men) there is evidence here that Mom's Boys/13th Power was a better than average garage band - not particularly original but fun.  When I say they are not original, I don't just mean derivative - the guitar solo in "Lonely Man" is lifted from the Yardbirds' "I Can't Make Your Way," "Shine It On" sounds a lot like "Western Union" by the Five Americans, "Captain Hassel" borrows from Junior Walker's "Shotgun."  Despite this, all the songs are pretty engaging, whoever is playing really cooks.  Nothing comes close to "Shape of Things To Come" in terms of quality, I guess the next best track would be "Fifty Two Per Cent" which is about how that percentage of the American population is under age 25 in 1968 and the power they can exert.  I also like "Shine It On" and "Let Your Mind Run Free."  Most of the songs have a youth power theme, which reflects the film in which youth take power and run amok.  The songs have a more positive view of youth than the film of course.  The lyrics have a lot of 1960's hippie cliches that I find pretty amusing, although less sympathetic listeners might consider them stupid.  I had not seen the film "Wild in the Streets," when I first encountered this group and the song "Shape of Things to Come" on Rhino's expanded version of "Nuggets" where it was one of my favorite tracks.  It later got picked up by Target for a commercial which must have been pretty amazing to any surviving members of the 13th Power I imagine.  I hope they got paid for it.  Unfortunately they didn't get any songwriting royalties because the song and "Fifty Two Per Cent" were both written by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, my favorite of the Brill Building songwriters.  Unless you are a garage aficionado, all you really need from here is "Shape of Things To Come" which you can get from "Nuggets" but if you should stumble across a copy it is well worth checking out although it is fairly short and if you pay a lot you might feel ripped off.  I didn't pay a lot so I'm pretty happy with it.  Recommended for Paul Revere and the Raiders fans who wish Mark Lindsay had wanted to run for president.

Instant Party - The Everly Brothers

Instant Party

The Everly Brothers

Warner Bros.  W1430

1962

The Everlys' fourth album for Warner Bros. - the first two were really good, the third was not so good.  This one is like the third, "Both Sides of an Evening" - it is another concept album, relies heavily on pop standards and showtunes, and is disappointing.  The concept this time is that this is a party record (a lot less fun than a Beach Boys party unfortunately) and it alternates slow tracks with faster tracks presumably for variety in dancing.  Most kids nowadays would want a lot higher b.p.m. then they are going to get from the Everlys for their dances.  There are also a bunch of recipes and party games that the brothers supposedly endorse on the back cover.  I doubt the modern kids would care much for those either.  That really was a different world.  I love the Everlys and would listen to them sing just about anything, but I'd rather it was rock, folk or country.  If I have to hear "Autumn Leaves," "Bye, Bye Blackbird" or "Oh My Papa" they do them as well as anyone I suppose, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't rather hear "Cathy's Clown" or "Lucille."  The only memorable song on this record is "Step It Up and Go" which they apparently learned from their father, Ike.  It is a lively rocker with a country flavor that suits them well.  Papa Everly is also responsible for the only other notable songs on the record, "Ground Hawg" and "Long Lost John."  The rest is pleasant but forgettable.  I'm happy I have this record and I play it sometimes, but unless you are a big fan you probably can skip it.  As for being a party record, well maybe in a rest home.  Recommended for party people with delicate dispositions.

The Composer of Desafinado, Plays - Antonio Carlos Jobim

The Composer of Desafinado, Plays
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Verve  V-8547
1963

I pulled this out thinking I might get rid of it and decided to give it one final spin.  I like the Stan Getz bossa nova albums which rely heavily on Jobim's compositions but I figured that without Getz's sax or Astrud Gilberto's breathy vocals, this instrumental album was kind of useless.  Jobim plays piano on it and he's not exactly Bill Evans.  He mostly plays a single note style that seems kind of basic, even amateurish.  As I listened I was unimpressed at first, the heavy use of strings reminded me of muzak.  But as I listened longer I started to relax, the sound was so soothing and mellow.  It made me feel good.  As a result I've been playing it a lot lately.  It works great as background music but you can listen to it too.  Jobim's piano work has a rightness to it, it fits.  It seems simple but then it carries you away.  The rhythm section swings and I've even come to like the strings.  Jobim is a world class composer, this album is loaded with classic songs: "The Girl From Ipanema," "Insensatez," "Corcovado," "One Note Samba" and "Desafinado."  To hear them flowing out one after another in nice tasteful arrangements is a real pleasure.  It transports me back to another time and place.  I'm not old enough to remember when the bossa nova was popular but I have to admit that this record makes me want to suit up, pour myself a martini and take a slow turn around the room with a lady in a cocktail dress and too much make-up.  Recommended for lounge lizards who are tired of their Martin Denny and Les Baxter records.

Chronic Town - R.E.M.

Chronic Town
R.E.M.
I.R.S. SP 70502
1982

Discovering college radio was a big deal for me.  Even in the relatively hip San Francisco Bay Area, the commercial radio stations were not playing a lot of New Wave music.  You'd hear an occasional track by the Clash or Blondie, but you'd have to hear a bunch of songs by the likes of the Eagles or the Doobie Brothers too.  College radio stations not only played cutting edge New Wave stuff but well-curated oldies as well, you'd hear the 13th Floor Elevators or the Chocolate Watchband just as much as the Damned or the Ramones on some stations.  I heard a lot of new music this way, that hasn't changed - I still mostly listen to college radio stations even though I'm long out of college.  It was through a college radio station that I discovered R.E.M., my favorite 1980s band.  I heard "Wolves, Lower" and it floored me.  It sounded like the perfect song, the jangly guitar, the relentless hooks, the evocative yet mysterious vocals, the driving beat.  I loved it, but I missed who the artist was.  I heard it again a few weeks later and again I missed who it was or maybe I just didn't understand the name - what kind of band names themselves R.E.M.?  The song stuck with me and I would look through new records looking for a song called "I'm Sailing Over" which is how I misheard "House in order" from the song's chorus.  A few months later I heard "Radio Free Europe" which blew me away and this time I heard that the artist was R.E.M..  I bought "Murmur" the next time I went to the record store and loved it.  I kept buying the I.R.S. albums as they came out but ignored the funny EP with the gargoyle on the cover because I didn't buy EPs or singles, I just wanted full length albums.  Finally I broke down and bought it when I saw a used copy.  I put it on the turntable and was flabbergasted to hear that great song I never forgot about.  "Wolves, Lower" thrilled me then and it thrills me now.  I still consider it my favorite R.E.M. song.  Spinning the rest of the EP I realized that I had heard "Gardening at Night" and "1,000,000" before on the radio as well.  After that I lost my prejudice about EPs.  The early R.E.M. were often criticized for their inscrutable or incomprehensible lyrics not to mention Michael Stipe's disinterest in enunciation, but I considered that a virtue.  Among the five tracks on this record, there is not a single song that I really know the meaning of, heck there isn't even one I can understand without a lyric sheet.  There are no love songs, there are no obvious statements of any sort.  I just pick up stray sentences and phrases, all of which I find striking and compelling.  As befits the band's name, I view the end result as dreamlike and poetic.  There are thousands of pop albums full of silly love songs, it is nice to have one that is different.  Just looking at the titles of the early R.E.M. songs is more like looking at a filmography for an experimental filmmaker than a discography.  How many other records before 1982 would have titles like "Wolves, Lower" or "Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)."  I can only imagine what your typical AOR radio station programmer of that era would say if someone asked him to start playing a song called "Gardening at Night."  I greatly admire Stipe's unusual vision and use of language.  I play this record all the time and I never get tired of it.  All five songs are terrific.  I consider R.E.M.'s period of time at I.R.S. records to represent one of the most significant bodies of work in the history of American rock and this is an essential part of it.  It is the sound that launched countless other college rock bands - the chiming guitars, obscure lyrics, moaned vocals, straight ahead rhythms, and lack of solos and other rock star posturing - they basically invented a whole school of alternative rock.  Recommended for Byrds fans who dig surrealism.

Talking Heads: 77 - The Talking Heads

Talking Heads: 77
The Talking Heads
Sire 6036
1977

It was the New Wave that got me interested in modern music again after several years of obsessing over the 1960s.  I didn't go for it right away.  I heard the Ramones and thought they were silly (I've since changed my mind fortunately) and I thought the Sex Pistols were incompetent hucksters (changed my mind there too.)  I was always lukewarm about punk, I was alienated by that scene for the most part.  I liked the Clash, Elvis Costello and the Talking Heads, they were smart and had something to say.  The Heads especially appealed to me - they looked like me and my friends and seemed more like college kids than rock stars.  When I saw them on "Saturday Night Live" in 1979 performing "Take Me To The River," I became instantly smitten with them.  I went out and bought this, their debut album, along with Elvis Costello's "Armed Forces" which was my first foray into the New Wave.  This album amazed me.  It was probably the most avant-garde record I had ever heard, not musically but lyrically and conceptually.  My taste was pretty mainstream, I had yet to hear the Velvet Underground or Roxy Music or the weirder side of David Bowie.  I loved David Byrne's geeky persona and his seemingly normal yet off-kilter statements, I pored over the lyric sheet marveling at his inventiveness.  "The Book I Read" was a song that seemed to come right out of my own head as if I'd written it myself (I wish.)  I wasn't used to pop songs speaking so directly to my own feelings and experiences.  Unlike most rock stars of the 1970s, I could relate to David Byrne.  He had so many interesting observations and wrote about mundane topics in a fascinating way.  What classic rock act could have come up with a song like "Don't Worry About the Government" in which Byrne sings an ode to the building he lives in and praises civil servants?  That song astonished and delighted me when I first heard it.  Though I can no longer hear it without thinking parody, "Psycho Killer" at the time impressed me greatly with its deranged point of view.  "No Compassion" has some really funny lyrics - "they say compassion is a virtue, but I don't have the time" is one of my favorite lines.  It also features some fun tempo changes like many of the songs on the record.  I also particularly like the manic "Pulled Up," and the funky "Uh-Oh Love Comes To Town."  I really dig Tina Weymouth's bass playing, I'm a sucker for a catchy bass hook and she whomps them out with the best of them.  Most of the songs by the early Heads are driven by her.  This album is so propulsive and compelling, it never quits.  Smarts, goofiness, hooks and a big beat - that almost guarantees a record that will spend a lot of time on my turntable as this one has for 30 years.  It is still where I go when I feel like hearing the Heads.  Recommended for energetic nerds and twitchy art students.

Spaceship Earth - Sugarloaf

Spaceship Earth

Sugarloaf

Liberty LST-11010

1971 

The second album by Sugarloaf - I've listened to it a bunch of times and I'm still not sure if I like it, which probably means I don't.  It is kind of interesting though.  At times the group comes on like a straight ahead rock band akin to Crow or Steppenwolf, other times they sound more pop like the Raiders or the Guess Who and other times they go prog-rock with keyboardist Jerry Corbetta sounding like he's auditioning for Argent.  The new guy, Robert Yeazel, dominates the album writing or co-writing all but one of the songs on the record.  He's the hippie dude in the groovy macrame shirt on the right side of the front cover and his songs sound like the sort of songs a guy in a groovy macrame shirt would write.  Given the album title I expected an ecology theme, but actually it is more of a living in the city sucks we have got to back to nature theme or as they say in "I Don't Need You Baby" - "I'm gonna do what is needed, keep my mind good and weeded" which suggests that some of nature's appeal might be illicit as well but they also dig fresh air, the sun and the trees.  Actually like most rock albums, the songs are more about love than the environment which is just as well I think.  Only one song, "Mother Nature's Wine," sounds anything like their most famous song "Green-Eyed Lady" (from their first album) and it is the only song Robert Yeazel did not write.  With it's tempo changes and big hooky bass line, it sounds like they are consciously attempting a "Green-Eyed Lady" retread but it is not nearly as memorable.  Musically I do like the eclecticism of the group's sound and the boys can really play.  They are cooking on the prog-rock instrumental, "Spaceship Earth," that opens the album and there is some nice soloing on the rocking "Tongue in Cheek" which also has a bit of prog-rock flavor.  I'm not a fan of prog-rock, but if there has to be such a thing, let it be like this - it is very dynamic and never reminds me of Mussorgsky.  Overall I prefer their first album although this album is more consistently engaging.  If you have a taste for early 1970s rock you may like this album.  Recommended for adventurous Yes fans.

If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears - The Mamas and the Papas

If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears
The Mamas and the Papas
Dunhill  D50006
1966 

When I started this blog, I thought I would just blog about whatever I was randomly listening to, but I find myself increasingly selecting records on the basis of whether I want to blog about them or not.  Sometimes I pick a record and realize I don't have anything to say about it and put it back.  Other times I pick a record that I don't particularly want to listen to, but which I want to write about, like this one.  I don't play it very much but I have a long history with it.  I discovered it through my Dad.  My Dad was not a rock and roll guy, his taste ran more Streisand/Sinatra and mariachi music when I was a kid.  For some reason though he got this album a few years after it came out.  He played it all the time for awhile, it seemed like every Saturday morning I would wake up to him blasting it on the stereo.  It was the first real rock album I ever heard and I loved it.  My sisters and I used to stare at the cover and speculate about the people squished into the bathtub.  They made hippies seem attractive and glamorous at least until I encountered my two uncles who had become hippies and then I decided they were kind of ugly and scary.  This record and in particular "California Dreamin'" took on a special poignancy for me when my parents divorced and I was exiled to cold, snowy Salt Lake City.  When I returned to California to live with my Dad, he no longer played this record and neither did I.  It reminded me of the happier days of my childhood and I didn't want to be reminded of what I had lost.  After I left home I came across this in the record store and decided to buy it and see if it was as good as I remembered.  Not really, but I do like it.  It is a well-produced mix of folk-rock and sunshine pop, a bit dated but still fun.  John Phillips' lyrics are not very original, but he is good with language and even when the words seem trite I find them engaging.  Everyone knows the two hits "California Dreamin'" and "Monday, Monday" and very little on this record can match them aside from "Straight Shooter," "Somebody Groovy" and "Go Where You Wanna Go" all of which probably should have been hits.  "Got A Feelin'" is a nice slower tempo song with pretty instrumental backing and their trademark beautiful vocal harmonies.  They approach most of their covers by slowing them down as well.  They come up with interesting and sophisticated arrangements but I prefer the faster tempos originals of "You Baby" (Turtles), "I Call Your Name" (Beatles) "Spanish Harlem" (Ben E. King) and "Do You Wanna Dance" (Bobby Freeman/Beach Boys.)  The slow versions do allow for more elaborate vocalizing but generally, propulsion means more to me than harmonies when it comes to silly love songs, otherwise I'd be listening to the Lettermen or the Sandpipers.  Nonetheless this is a consistently enjoyable record that sounds wonderful.  It is not very substantial but it is very tasty, kind of like a cake that is mostly frosting.  Recommended for anyone who ever wanted to be a hippie but didn't want to get dirty.