Paul Westerberg 5: Come Feel Me Tremble and Dead Man Shake

A year after his double-whammy bipolar Stereo and Mono albums, Paul Westerberg stuck with the formula with two more albums that equally indulged his desires to rock and wallow. Once again he played everything himself, and he’d gotten rather adept at recording in his basement.

Come Feel Me Tremble may have gotten more attention, seeing as that was also the title of a documentary—mostly gathered from camcorder footage—about his tour promoting the last album, usually with a cigar in his mouth. While some of the songs appear here, this is not a soundtrack album. It’s still full of catchy hooks, but the vocals are usually buried, so it’s not easy to hear if anything should be considered profound.

To wit, “Dirty Diesel” rumbles along with a riff one chords except when it switches to a second, and eventually fades away. Titles like “Soldier Of Misfortune” and “What A Day (For A Night)” portend Westerbergian wordplay, but we can’t understand most of the verses. The vaudevilley verses of “Knockin’ Em Back” sit strangely next to the punkier verses, “Wild & Lethal” has some unexpected chord changes and wailing harmonica for five minutes, and “Never Felt Like This Before” is a tender piano sketch that stops after a minute. Two versions of “Crackle & Drag” back to back not only finally provide marked contrast between loud and soft, but it’s only the more acoustic version that cause us to dig into the lyrics, which address Sylvia Plath’s suicide. By the same token, the subject of “Pine Box” would appear to be his father, but that’s only a guess. “Meet Me Down The Alley” tries for the yearning of “Here Comes A Regular”, and he takes a stab at Jackson Browne’s perennial “These Days”; Gregg Allman needn’t have worried.

That’s a mild tie-in to the content of the album credited to Grandpaboy that came out the same day on the Fat Possum label, the subsidiary of Epitaph devoted to aging bluesmen. Dead Man Shake isn’t really blues per se, but is actually rather convincing. Covers are scattered throughout; “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is older than he is, while Jimmy Reed’s “Take Out Some Insurance” first came out the year he was born. “Souvenirs” is from John Prine’s second album, but nobody expected Anthony Newley’s “What Kind Of Fool Am I?” Of his own tunes, “Vampires & Failures”, “Get A Move On”, and even the title track might has well have been on the “other” album, “Mpls” and “Cleaning House” sound more like the stuff Slim Dunlap would do, while “No Matter What You Say” is more smokey and descends into parody.

While he’s certainly capable as a one-man band, and such economy may have helped his bottom line, it didn’t do much for enriching his catalog. If you’re gonna put out two albums at once, make them different if they’re not stellar top to bottom. Better yet, form a band.

Paul Westerberg Come Feel Me Tremble (2003)—2½
Grandpaboy Dead Man Shake (2003)—2½

Guided By Voices 3: Sandbox

Clearly determined to keep making records even if nobody bought them, Guided By Voices released their second album in the space of a calendar year. Another dozen songs totaling less than a half-hour, Sandbox was recorded with the established rhythm section of Mitch Mitchell (not that one) and Kevin Fennell, with Robert Pollard’s brother Jim and their coproducer adding some guitar.

“Lips Of Steel” and “A Visit To The Creep Doctor” might as well be two halves of the same song, with solid power chords and partially buried vocals. “Everyday” still has some R.E.M. jangle, but with mildly out-of-tune guitars; while the message is muddled, he knew it needed a hook for a chorus. While all one performance with no editing, “Barricade” is alternated between fast and slow sections, one of which culminates in a repeated quote from the Beatles’ “Little Child”. “Get To Know The Ropes” is a martial dirge with self-harmonies and a repeat of the “ladies and gentlemen” introduction already heard on “Lips Of Steel”. There’s even a fake fade.

He learned to kick off sides with a rocker, and “Can’t Stop” is that, with dynamic shifts; it’s almost a love song. He gets mildly political on “The Drinking Jim Crow”, but you have to listen really closely to hear him call America “a nasty little nation”. “Trap Soul Door” is very interesting, as it’s so brief, but has his hallmark of a simple soloing guitar over droning bass lines. “Common Rebels” begins with alternating guitars in each speaker, but improves when it turns into a Who pastiche. “Long Distance Man” is a solo acoustic one with layered harmonies; straightforward but over quick, whereas “I Certainly Hope Not” straddles a jerky verse with a more power-pop chorus. While “Adverse Wind” has some melodic moments, it’s still a little jumbled and clattery.

Being recorded in an eight-track garage studio, Sandbox doesn’t have the lo-fi experimentation that would one day define the band, but Pollard is still experimenting with the form. He also hasn’t quite developed his voice—yet. It’s harmless, with no real clunkers, if not very memorable.

Guided By Voices Sandbox (1987)—3

Neil Young 75: As Time Explodes

Clearly excited by his latest band of older and newer friends, Neil Young took the Chrome Hearts on a “world tour” in the months before he turned 80, playing dates in Europe and the U.S. A live album followed, appearing first as a Record Store Day vinyl release, then given more widespread distribution on CD and via streaming about six weeks later.

What sets As Time Explodes apart from his other timely tour souvenir live albums is of course the song selection. “Daddy Went Walkin’” and “Looking Forward” from the late ‘90s and “Harvest Moon” have gentle accompaniment, while the louder “Ohio” is appropriately ragged. The more obscure “Name Of Love” is driven by his pump organ, and given a better treatment than its original, just as “Be The Rain” is about half the length of other versions. Current events inspired many of the song choices on the tour, as well as the new rant “Big Crime”. “Long Walk Home” is resurrected after almost forty years, with revised lyrics and widely missed notes, though “Vampire Blues” has been a regular since he first took up with Promise Of The Real. From there it’s some familiar warhorses: “Cortez The Killer” runs almost fifteen minutes, colored nicely by Spooner Oldham’s organ, but is most notable for the appearance of its long-missing final verses. “After The Gold Rush” now has Mother Nature on the run on in the 21st century. “Like A Hurricane” goes for almost eleven minutes, with the band doing their best Crazy Horse while also giving Neil room to stretch the dynamics. Finally, he tells the story of writing “Silver Eagle”, which gets a little more twang from guitarist Micah Nelson.

Considering the thirty-odd other songs from the thirty-odd shows on the tour, why he picked these particular selections and performances is known only to him. As Time Explodes is a perfectly serviceable live album in a catalog full of many others that are better just because they are.

Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts As Time Explodes (2026)—3

Queen 14: A Kind Of Magic

The Live Aid concerts in July 1985 were a big deal, and of all the artists given twenty minutes to strut their stuff onstage, Queen pretty much stole both shows. The history leading up to this occasion has been muddled by the major dramatic license taken by the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, but the fact remains that—overseas anyway—the band was still quite popular. They chose to capitalize on this momentum with a new album that partially tied into another major motion picture.

So given that they’d re-established themselves as rock royalty, and Freddie Mercury had gotten his pop preferences out of the way with his solo album (which, despite what the movie said, did not threaten to break up the band), you’d think that A Kind Of Magic would kick butt, right?

Well, it didn’t. The cartoon artwork throughout looked like they were hoping to ride the coattails of the Stones’ “Harlem Shuffle” video, and there was just the barest tie-in to the Highlander film with a single line on the back cover. The whole thing was just plain garish, even for them, and considering the year in which it appeared.

“One Vision” would have been better served had they started with those classic Brian May chords then the mysterious-sounding intro that kills a full minute. It’s not a bad tune, even with the “fried chicken” joke at the end. The title track continues the “one” theme in the lyrics, and is pretty harmless, especially compared to the rest of the album, starting with “One Year Of Love”. This is execrable adult contemporary, right in line with other hits of the time, complete with the same saxophone player from “Careless Whisper” and strings played first on synthesizer and then on real instruments. “Pain Is So Close To Pleasure” is dominated by Freddie’s unflattering falsetto throughout; he might have been going for Motown, but it sounds more like the worst parts of Hot Space. Brian remembered he played guitar in time for “Friends Will Be Friends”, another attempt at a grand singalong, forgetting that they’d only ended up combining and diluting “You’re My Best Friend” and “Somebody To Love”. (John Deacon had a hand in the last three, so maybe he was having a tough year.)

Side two is most closely connected with the movie, which would only be obvious to those who’d seen it. “Who Wants To Live Forever” has another orchestra for extra pomp, and the song only works once the drums come in. After several seconds of Brian trying to out-hammer Eddie Van Halen, “Gimme The Prize” is helpfully titled “Kurgan’s Theme” after the villain, and his voice can be heard quoting Def Leppard’s “Rock Of Ages” in the many samples heard among the heavy metal tropes. Roger Taylor is responsible for “Don’t Lose Your Head”; apparently he was content to program a drum machine, and somebody roped in Joan Armatrading to intone the title a few times. “Princes Of The Universe” ends a mostly loud album with a lot of bombast, but nothing really original.

As a soundtrack, A Kind Of Magic is no better than Flash Gordon, and as a Queen album, it’s a disappointment. Yet somehow the album has since made it to rank on several classic albums lists. The original CD had extras in the form of extended mixes of “A Kind Of Magic” and “Friends Will Be Friends”, as well as a solo piano instrumental of “Who Wants To Live Forever”. The 1991 CD added only that last track, plus an extended mix of “One Vision”. Two decades later, the third version added “Forever” and the extended “Friends”, the movie mix of “A Kind Of Magic”, single mixes of “Pain Is Close To Pleasure” and “One Vision”, plus a demo of the latter and a live version from their 1986 concerts at Wembley.

Coming a year after Live Aid, those shows were a big deal in the UK, where they were celebrated at year’s end with Live Magic, most of which came from the tour finale at Knebworth. Unfortunately, several songs were edited—badly, in the case of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, since the Galileo section came from the record anyway—so all could fit on a single LP. It didn’t come out on the US for another ten years, by which time Live At Wembley ’86 had already become the standard celebration of their triumphant return to the scene of Live Aid. It’s a full two hours, complete with their “ay-yo” jam, Brian’s nine-minute solo off “Brighton Rock”, an oldies medley, and starting the encore with “Big Spender”. Ten years later it was repackaged and retitled, with bonus tracks from other shows, including the Hungarian folk song Freddie performed in Budapest. (Some of that show was already excerpted on Live Magic, and the whole thing was commemorated on VHS and laserdisc in the UK and Japan in 1987. The full performance was released on CD 25 years later as Hungarian Rhapsody.)

Queen A Kind Of Magic (1986)—2
1986 CD: same as 1986, plus 3 extra tracks
1991 Hollywood reissue: same as 1986, plus 2 extra tracks
2011 remaster: same as 1986, plus 7 extra tracks
Queen Live Magic (1986)—3
Queen Live At Wembley ’86 (1992)—3½
2003 Live At Wembley Stadium: same as 1992, plus 4 extra tracks

Bill Wyman 3: Bill Wyman

Twenty years with the Stones meant a lot of sitting around for Bill Wyman, and although they were never going to use any of his songs for their semiannual albums, he kept recording anyway. Mostly this meant playing around with synthesizers, with a rotating group of friends who tended to work at Jimmy Page’s studio in Berkshire. Some of this experimentation was used on the soundtrack of the little-seen film Green Ice. Then somehow, the summer before Tattoo You was released and the subsequent tour happened, he had a mild hit with “(Si Si) Je Suis Un Rock Star”, a novelty song in fractured French with a truly cheesy synth part to match his weedy voice.

While it got somewhat regular MTV play when it was current, it wasn’t enough of a hit for the accompanying album to be released in America. It’s tough to say whether it would have made a dent. His voice does seem better matched to the robotic arrangements of “A New Fashion” and “Nuclear Reactions”. “Jump Up” attempts to create a new dance craze and fails, and we’re not sure how we’re supposed to relate to the weary jetsetter in “Rio De Janiero”. “Come Back Suzanne” was his other mild hit single of the period, with an even goofier video to match; it sounds like a real rhythm section too. “Ride On Baby” isn’t the Stones leftover from the Aftermath sessions, but his son helped write it. It has a lot of guitar from Brian Setzer, while Chris Rea provides the lead on the dreamy “Visions”. Knowing what we know now about his, shall we say, proclivities, “Seventeen” and “Girls” are a little cringey, though he might be trying to ape Mick on the latter.

While Bill Wyman isn’t as dull as his other two solo albums, it’s only of interest to Stones completists. They would naturally go for any of the reissues, which include four single edits as well as demos of the two hits.

Bill Wyman Bill Wyman (1982)—2½
2006 Bill Wyman Solo Collection Edition: same as 1982, plus 4 extra tracks

Grateful Dead 23: Two From The Vault

The curators of the Grateful Dead’s archives were always mindful, knowing that their audience was somewhat particular. Rather than just throw any show out on the market, even if it had already been shared and dubbed on countless tapes, whatever they released needed to be important or unique. So it was in the case of the second installment of the From The Vault series.

At the time, this 1968 show was the earliest one they’d yet officially released, on top of being one of the few professional recordings from that year. Amazingly, some of the band wasn’t thrilled with the tapes back in the day, and even used them as a reason to justify firing Pigpen and Bob Weir for not keeping up with the others musically. Luckily for this supposedly less-than-dynamic duo, they would be reinstated soon enough, and ‘90s technology enabled us all to hear what the dissenters couldn’t then.

Pigpen was still a focal point onstage, so they open with a 16-minute “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”. But then the suites start to flow: “Dark Star” into “St. Stephen” and “The Eleven”, slowing down for “Death Don’t Have No Mercy”. None of these were on either of their two albums, and could have filled up an album on their own. After a new seconds to regroup (and change CDs for the listener) they head right into “That’s It For The Other One” and “New Potato Caboose”, both twice their album length, followed by 17 minutes of “Turn On Your Love Light”. The crowd’s begging for more, so they get “Morning Dew”, which builds until the power is cut.

Two From The Vault certainly makes a nice companion to Live/Dead, unless you didn’t like that album to begin with. It portended well for the future of the series, except that further excavations would emerge under another banner, leaving this one all but abandoned. (Three songs—totaling 34 minutes—from the night before appeared on the first expansion of Anthem Of The Sun, and eventually comprised the bonus disc in Rhino’s expansion of this album fifteen years after its original release.)

Grateful Dead Two From The Vault (1992)—3½
2007 reissue: same as 1992, plus 3 extra tracks

Nilsson 13: Sandman

The cover of Sandman is something of a joke; the front shows Harry Nilsson happily sitting on a beach, fully clothed, while the rear suggests he’s been eaten by a crab. (These photos were taken by his pal Mal Evans, the Beatle road manager who was tragically killed shortly before the album came out.) Inside the gatefold is something of a Victorian-style etching of what appears to be an impending shipwreck, with various of the album’s participants’ faces slipped in. Clearly, Harry loved comedy, but even humor that isn’t an in-joke can only be funny so far.

“I’ll Take A Tango” begins with admitting to an aversion to rock ‘n roll and electric guitars, while the barely danceable rhythm lists towards the edge of the deck depicted in the aforementioned gatefold. But it’s followed by “Something True”, the closest thing to the romantic splendor for which he first became famous, and a stunner. That slide guitar isn’t George Harrison’s, yet we wish it were. It’s only a momentary distraction, as he now informs us that “Pretty Soon There’ll Be Nothing Left For Everybody” over a busy samba beat. There’s a lot of reverb throughout the album, thankfully toned down on the a cappella college parody “The Ivy Colored Walls”—we’re guessing all those vocal parts are him—which crawls to a denouement without a clear punchline. Instead it’s right into the completely lazy “Here’s Why I Did Not Go To Work Today”, which on the label is the subtitle of “Thursday”.

Depending on who you are, the album’s high or low point is “The Flying Saucer Song”, which he’d been trying to record for three years. It’s predominantly a conversation over a lopey sax groove between two drunks at a bar, mediated by the bartender, and naturally he does all the voices. (Joe Cocker can be heard wailing in the background.) While it may not have been inspired by Cheech & Chong, it pales. For even more hilarity, “How To Write A Song” gives him another excuse to put “a—hole” into a song while providing the instructions over a canned cheering audience. He finally finishes “Jesus Christ You’re Tall” from the snippet on the last album, degenerating into a few minutes of scatting. “Will She Miss Me” is another big production with a romantic undercurrent, trilling strings everywhere.

Comedy albums were of course popular by the mid-‘70s, but that’s not the main reason why people liked Harry Nilsson. He clearly didn’t have enough songs in him anymore, which is too bad, since he didn’t have enough for a comedy album either.

Nilsson Sandman (1976)—2