Lonnie Mack: The Wham of the Memphis Man

I never would have heard of this guy if it weren't for Stevie Ray Vaughan.  He was a huge influence on Stevie and Stevie, in turn, helped Lonnie's album get re-produced on Alligator Records to be discovered by a new audience.  It's been quite a while since I've listened to

Lonnie Mack: The Wham of that Memphis Man

Sound-wise, instrumentation-wise, style-wise, this is pure 60's rock and roll Memphis style.  It's actually quite surprising given Lonnie Mack's many talents and versatility on the guitar that he wasn't a more well known, house-hold name.  If you think of some of the more well known yet mediocre players of the time it makes it even more surprising that Lonnie Mack is relatively obscure.  Unlike Dick Dale, Duane Eddy and Link Wray, Lonnie Mack is also a very competent vocalist along the likes of Ricky Nelson or Jerry Lee Lewis.  This is a great album with some real virtuosic playing, great rhythm and soul music and one that needs to be heard by more folks.

I have a newer Lonnie Mack Album, Strike Like Lightning as I believe his career experienced a resurgence due to his collaborations with SRV.  I really want to pull that one out and give it a listen but as I have to head off to the grocery store right now I'll have to leave that for another day.

The Who: Who's Next

This listening was inspired by a young lady's Dr. Who T-shirt which was a take off of this album cover.  Again, this is another record that I got from my mother's record collection back in 1986 or 1987.  I was never much of a Who fan, I have NO idea why.  This album never got a lot of play and so I figured that I would slap on

The Who: Who's Next

I'll be damned if not every song on this album is a classic.  Seriously, not a single dud on this album.  Some band's have a "Best Of" record where the first two songs are really good and then the rest are just songs that the band likes.  This entire album could be a best of.  In fact, I should check and make sure that's not what this is. 

Side A

1. Baba O'Reily
2. Bargain
3. Love Ain't For Keeping
4. My Wife
5. The Song is Over

Side B

1. Getting in Tune
2. Going Mobile
3. Behind Blue Eyes
4. Won't Get Fooled Again

My only problem with listening to this album is that I can't get friggin' David Caruso's face out of my head when I hear it.  Every CSI show has used a song off this album and it will take many, many listens for me to stop associating these guys with CSI.  This is straight ahead, in your face Rock and Roll... more than Zeppelin (though Zeppelin is still my favorite due to their diversity, instrumentation, mystique, etc) and more than anything out today.  If you are looking to pick up ONE album by the Who, make it this one.  It makes me want to go listen to my other Who albums to see if they're as good as this but I'll have to leave that for another day.

Men at Work: Business as Usual

Good lord, I haven't listened to this whole album since I was probably in 6th grade.  And at that time I only had it on cassette tape.  I remember being in college at the Vermont Public Radio Record Sale and they were trying to get rid of all the unsold albums that they were left with after the sale.  I was so excited when I found

Men at Work: Business as Usual

Granted, I also found "Cargo" and whatever their third album is called, I was excited to find all of them. 

I really came into my own musically when I was in the 4th grade.  I had a babysitter named Lisa who was a big Men at Work fan and that made me a Men At Work fan.  I got both Cargo and Business as Usual for Christmas that Christmas and with it came a Panasonic Slim Line RQ-2735 Portable Cassette Player/Recorder (remember these?)

I would play my Men at Work tapes but would also use the recorder to get songs off the radio that I liked.  I had a cassette tape full of half copies of Land of 1,000 Dances, Ghostbusters, Eye of the Tiger and anything by Huey Lewis and the News.  They were half copies because I would never catch the song at the beginning.  I would always scramble to get my recorder ready, tape in the right place and so often my recording of the song I wouldn't start until the second verse.  Sometimes the stars would align and I would be sitting there just as a song came on, my tape would be all cued up and I would catch it sooner than I had on a previous recording.  I wouldn't go back and erase the first copy of the song because it would be in the middle of the tape and I wouldn't want to accidentally record over anything else.... phew... my life was hard.

It's hard to say which MAW tape I would play the most. I even had a hard time deciding which one to listen to today.  It's not like the difference between Boston's debut and subsequent follow-up, I've always liked both albums the about the same.  I suppose this one won out because when I read the title "Who Can It Be Now" I immediately got the song in my head and it's still there now.

I really liked setting this down on the turntable and giving it a spin.  Even without the visceral nostalgia effect it was really interesting to hear this album with another 28 years of listening to and making music under my belt.  I had forgotten that much of the music of MAW involved saxophone and flute (what is it with Aussie bands and saxophone?  MAW, INXS, maybe it was just the 80s, Huey Lewis, anything from Lethal Weapon...).  Besides the usual "Who Can it Be Now" and "Down Under" the first side also has "I Can See It In Your Eyes" and "Underground".  I think I first became aware of vocal harmonies with Underground as I would often try to sing with the higher vocal on the chorus.  I had much more success this time.  Also love the harmonic minory bass/guitar riff on this one.  Still remember all the words I thought went to the song but most likely aren't actual lyrics.  I never could figure out what Colin Hay was saying. 

The one odd track on this side, even when I was a kid was "Helpless Automaton" which was sung by Greg Ham, the instrumental heavyweight behind Men At Works music (think sax part for Who Can it Be Now, flute part for Down Under and keyboard parts for everything).  It's a fun tune, very phrenetic with inventive instrumental parts.  It also screams 80s sci-fi, Blade Runner and the like.

The second side on this album got less play in my day.  "People Just Love to Play with Words" was always a fun listen but "Be Good Johnny" was my favorite.  I had forgotten how cool the intro was and I must not have been the only one for the intro to the final School of Rock song with Jack Black was based heavily on the Men At Work song.  Listen to them back to back and you'll see what I mean.

The other three tracks on this side, "Touching the Untouchables", great slow groove ala first Dire Straits album with a great sax/guitar descending line, "Catch a Star" sort of a slow groove reggae type of thing (again, very 80s), and "Down by the Sea", kind of a trippy tune that is very well crafted but the three songs here are filler when it comes to the stronger tracks of Who Can it Be, Down Under and Be Good Johnny. 

Wanting to fully relive my trip back to 4th grade I'm going to want to pull out Cargo and give that a listen as well but the kids have friends over, are using Sculpey clay and I'm going to have to save that one for another day.

Boston: Don't Look Back

Finally, one in keeping with the intent of the project. I know I skipped a couple of days, I was on a camping trip.  Having to listen to extra albums to make up for lost time isn't realistic, especially since I also have to add watching Blade Runner to my list while watching the kids and renovating the house.  I did finally sit down and grab a record, I decided on one that I've never actually sat and listened to all the way through.  I was very excited to do so as I was inspired by an earlier listening.  I sat and listened to

Boston: Don't Look Back

Boston's second album had its issues.  For one thing it had to follow one of the most amazing debut albums of all time.  Second, Epic records was pushing really hard for a sequel, harder than Tom Scholz was willing/able to work.  Boston's debut album had basically been written over the course of 10 years or more, Boston's second outing was forced out of Scholz in only two years.

Although the album spawned one of Boston's biggest hits (and a great tune that really gets stuck in your head) Don't Look Back, the rest of the album is really pretty good, just not very memorable.  I think that I used to play the first track on the album and then let the rest run out while I was doing other things.  It would then end up back in its sleeve and back in the collection.

So I made myself sit down and listen to it.  Open ears, open mind and nothing else to do to distract me.  It really is a good album.  I happen to think that if I hadn't heard Boston's first album and had a chance to listen to this one on its own for a while it may be an album that would be on the top of my play list.  Sadly though, as Scholz puts it, you can't lose your virginity twice.  The album is good but doesn't have the same kick and genius as the first.

The song Don't Look Back is one that Scholz had on the back burner already, it came from the era of the original songs for the debut album and it sounds it.  It's fresh and original, it has its own sound.  Each of the other songs on this album don't have that same sound, they tend to re-hash riffs and motifs from the first album just arranged in different ways.  Again, without having listened to the first album I may have really liked this one.

This album gives us Boston's first slow song, A Man I'll Never Be.  The second song on the album, The Journey, is apparently Scholz's favorite, I'll have to give it another couple of listens before I feel the same way.  Just like Smokin' on the first album, Party was written by both Delp and Scholz and much like Let Me Take You Home Tonight, Used to Bad News is the only purely Delp penned tune on the album.  Let Me Take You Home Tonight is one of my favorite tracks on Boston, again, it will take me a couple more listens of Used to Bad News in order to feel remotely the same.

Some bands release one album with one decent song on them and are never heard from again.  Boston could have released Don't Look Back only and have been listed among the great one-hit-wonders.  The title track and the very cool album artwork is worth the price of the album alone (for me the price was $0 as this is another I received from my mother when she ditched her collection).  While I didn't listen to the album much as a kid, I used to sit and stare at the album cover and insides forever (it's a gatefold cover though it is only one album). 

But this was not a one hit wonder band.  This is one of America's greatest Rock and Roll Band and deserves their spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I think the best use of this record is to put it on immediately after listening to the first, not as a second album but as a continuation of the first.  Think of them together as Boston's double album and you've got yourself a good hour and a half of listening bliss.

I thought I had Boston's Third Stage lying around somewhere but I can't find it.  I do hope to track it down as I would like to see how much Scholz's writing changed in the 10 years between that release and the first album.  But I'll have to leave that for another day.

Johnny Cash: With His Hot and Blue Guitar

This one will be short, I need to pack to go camping.  This is also totally breaking with my intention because I wanted to listen to albums I currently have in my collection.  Problem is I've been wanting a Johnny Cash album for-ever.  Of all the stuff in my collection I just can't believe this wasn't one of them. 

Johnny Cash: With His Hot and Blue Guitar

Sun records, famous for recording Elvis Presley in the beginning of his career, launched some other big names back then, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.  These were on 78 rpm singles records and this album is apparently the first full length album ever issued by Sun Records.  It is a collection of Johnny Cash singles and this 180 gram lp does NOT sound like it was recorded 60 years ago.  I swear if I close my eyes it sounds like Johnny is live tracking his vocals in the corner of the room (with a good amount of rockabilly slap-back echo).  This is such a clear, "warm" recording I'm blown away.  I can hear the guitar so clearly I can tell what kind of strings he has on his guitar and I'm going to run out to buy some right now.  I've got a kid on either side of me bopping back and forth as I try to write and Aria has given this her stamp of approval:  "I really like this one daddy".  That's my girl. 

Notable tracks on here are Rock Island Line,  I Walk the Line, I Heard That Lonesome Whistle and Folsom Prison Blues.  My next job is to get out my guitar and learn all these songs in full.  Can't believe I waited until I was 40. 

This makes me want to pull out more Johnny Cash albums and give them a listen, but since I don't have anymore, it will have to wait until another day.

Boston

Eventually I will pick an album that I don't absolutely love but so far I've had a hard time pulling those out.  Instead I decided was that I wanted to pull out one of my top ten, no, top five, no, top three albums of all time.  In fact, if I was to be left on a deserted island with nothing but a plate, a needle, a cone of paper and one record album it might just have to be this one.  It's just got too many things going for it: one of the best produced rock albums in history, great lyrics which actually mean something, nostalgia, impeccable musicianship, a lead singer who may have been the best in the business and a lead guitarist who is creative both musically and as an engineer in music technology.  At one time that band was "just another band out of Boston" until they became:

Now let me just say that there's another band out of Boston that most people probably think of first (despite, you know, their name not actually having the word Boston in it... or being comprised only of the word Boston).  I can't seem to understand why Aerosmith is such a huge, mega-hit band, continually churning out music and selling out shows, rockin' with Run-DMC, getting gigs on American Idol etc while Boston sort of faded into obscurity.

My only guess is that it's because Boston simply gave it all away on this, their first album.  And I'm not being figurative here.  I mean they REALLY gave it all away.  With every track on this album I look forward to the next one, and the next one and the next one.  Each song is written, performed, orchestrated and mixed so well it was like all the musical geniuses of the world got together and collaborated on this.  And yet all those geniuses simply live as one in the head of Tom Scholtz.

I found that I actually couldn't type while this record was playing and so I uploaded photos from a recent family vacation instead.  At the end of the album my daughter stood up, flipped the record back over and said "I want to hear that again".  She has since been singing the lyrics to Peace of Mind all wrong and it's making me almost homicidal.  But she's 11, likes the band and is my daughter so I choke back my frustration and gently remind her of the way the lyrics are supposed to go.  She smiles and ignores my attempts.  I bite myself on the cheek in order to focus my rage.  Now she's murdering Mull of Kintyre which isn't even ON this album.  The Seven degrees of separation there is that I was just complaining about Aerosmith who recently had Johnny Depp join them onstage who is working on an album of music with Joe Perry and Paul McCartney who wrote and sang Mull of Kintyre.  How Aria climbed into my head and pulled that one out and yet can't get into my head and get the real lyrics to any song amazes me.  But I digress...

I'll make the history of this one short.  I got this album from my mother's record collection when she decided to get rid of her turntable and records.  Some of those records which became my first record collection was Zeppelin IV, Jethro Tull: Stormwatch, Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon and Boston.  Still my favorite albums to listen to.  And before you go thinking my mom was all cool let me just also tell you that I had to get rid of the Chris DeBurgh, Tina Turner: Private Dancer and Barry Manilow.

My sister at the time (this was around 8th grade, 9th grade) had a cassette tape of the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and she would listen to it every night before she went to bed.  Again, this is not figuratively speaking but LITERALLY speaking.  Don't get me wrong, it is a decent soundtrack and I like many of the songs on it, but I can never, ever hear them again in that order... ever.  Every night I would hear Sylvia and Mickey

"Sylvia!"
"Yes, Mickey."
"How do you call your Lover Boy?"
"Come here, Lover Boy!"
"And if he doesn't answer?"
"Oh, Lover Boy!"
"And if he still doesn't answer?"
"I simply say... Baaa- by"

Every, every, every, every night.  So in response I took my Boston album, recorded it onto a white cassette tape with no label and I, in turn, listened to that album Every Single Night.  What inadvertently happened is that I've now forever linked these two albums in my head but don't worry, I'm currently in therapy for that.

Released in 1976 (I was two) six of the tracks on here were actually written and recorded on a demo by Tom Scholz years before the band actually came together.  The guy is an MIT grad with a recording studio in his home.  He brought in Brad Delp to do the singing and together they wrote a pretty smokin' track titled "Smokin'" (fitting).  Brad Delp then wrote the track that finishes off the album, sort a double time revivalist sounding tune called "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" and the complete opposite of the way the last two albums I've listened to have ended by being probably the most upbeat on the whole album.

Side one

1. More Than a Feeling - I bought a 12 string just to play this song... well and Over the Hills and Far Away and Wish You Were Here... but mostly this one.  This song has a beautiful guitar solo that's not a wanky, pentatonic improv but rather a finely crafted solo that completely fits the song and moves it along on its journey.  Most of the solos on here are like that and many are also harmonized with two guitars, sort of like Allman Brothers but more classically based rather than blues based.  Beautiful.
2. Peace of Mind - These lyrics are speaking to me, I'm just not listening yet but when I do, I'll have Peace of Mind.  I love the use of acoustic guitar throughout this album. It's perfect
3. Foreplay/Longtime - from the awesome walking bass line, great keyboard work and huge build up into the false sense of rest and then blasting into Longtime, the construction of these two songs is, and I really want to punch myself for using this word, Epic.  Funny thing is, Epic is the record label this came out on...

Side two

1. Rock and Roll Band - The vocals on here are killer, Delp was amazing and his death was a huge blow to me as I'd always hoped to see the band perform live someday with him at the helm.  Still planning on seeing the band, just won't quite be the same.
2. Smokin' - I stole part of the arrangement of this for a tune we recorded.  This has the best instrumental break/solo section of any song I've ever heard. Ever.
3. Hitch a Ride - Again, beautiful mixing of the acoustic into the song, great drumming and love the lyrics.  Great one to "leave it all behind to".  The organ leading the way into the breakdown is magic.  Absolute controlled use of feedback into the short dueling guitar solo.  This song is rather hidden here in the middle of the second side but is a terrific songs and deserves its day in the sun. I love all the completely different guitar sounds Scholz uses and this one shows off his very fast, melodic and technical playing
4. Something About You - Love the intro into the harmonized guitar riff.  Just when you think you're getting a slow simmering tune the riff comes in with a pick slide down the low E string.  Vocals are great, think harmony that is all Delp.  Apparently the guy had the uncanny ability to exactly double track his vocals with same inflections, phrasing and pitch.  And the range on that guy.
5. Let Me Take You Home Tonight - What a way to take this one out... we'll miss you Brad.

This album made me want to take out Boston's second album, Don't Look Back and give it a listen.  I don't remember that album being as magical and I'm afraid I'm just not going to like it as much (though the title track is great).  I suppose that's why I'm doing this though so I'll give it a listen, just not now, I'll leave that one for another day.

Led Zeppelin: Presence

I figured I should just get it over with and get to one of my favorite bands in history.  I have four copies of Led Zeppelin I,III and IV, five copies of LZII, three copies of Houses of the Holy and In Through the Out Door and yet, while looking through my collection I noticed that I have only one copy of

Led Zeppelin: Presence

It got me thinking... is this album just not good?  No, on the contrary, this is a great album, most underrated of Zep's career and is a great listen all the way through.  The track listing on here most certainly derived from the time when vinyl ruled. 

Side A starts off with the very bombastic, in-your-face track Achilles Last Stand.  This is one of Zeps longer tunes but unlike the others it really keeps up the pace, there's no real languishing half-time breakdown and yet it doesn't feel forced but completely rock, completely organic. 

Side B starts off with Nobody's Fault But Mine, probably my favorite track on this album if I had to pick one.  There's so much diversity of sound on this album that you really gotta sit and listen to it all the way through.  If there was a track on here that I would consider the weakest of the bunch it would have to be Candy Store Rock.  Apparently it was written in an hour and the lyrics sound it.  It's not a terrible track mind you, just not the strongest on this album.  For some people it's their favorite track on this album, including Robert Plant apparently.

The last track, Tea For One, sees the band return to their slow burning blues-rock roots though a little heavier and more riff laden.  Much like SRV's In Step ending with the slower, more introspective Riviera Paradise, so does Zeppelin sit back and enjoy a slow groove to end a rather energetic, well done album.  It makes me want to pull out my other Zeppelin albums and give them a listen today.  But since Aria has an orthodontist appointment, I guess I'll have to save those for another day.