Paul McCartney 40: The Boys Of Dungeon Lane

History has shown that the time Paul McCartney spends making an album is no indication of the subsequent quality. His pace has slowed since the busy ‘70s and first half of the ‘80s, so now a five-year gap isn’t that big a deal between releases. Besides, he’s gotta slot all those colored vinyl variations of albums that have already been reissued into the schedule.

For most of this century he’s eschewed the band that still tours with him since they recorded Driving Rain together, preferring to work with young hip producers who can help him do it all himself. For The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, instead of relying on a pool, he chose Andrew Watt, whom he supposedly recommended to the Rolling Stones, who managed to get two albums out of that collaboration. Much has been made about the theme of looking back, from the title to the packaging and many of the lyrics, but that’s not the only thing going on. (Consider also that “Now And Then” was finally completed while this album was being formulated.)

“As You Lie There” begins with a guitar part that’s coincidentally close to an Andy Summers and Robert Fripp collaboration. The spoken sections put the song in a creepy light that the more rockin’ parts dispel. Mostly it’s odd to think of one of the most famous men in the world still wondering if someone he had a crush on as a teen ever thinks about him. Apparently “Lost Horizon” was started, abandoned, and forgotten decades ago, and it’s fine, but would work better onstage if he sped it up a bit. The lead track, “Days We Left Behind”, got a lot of notice for its gentle acoustic sound and heart-tugging content. While it’s not new territory for him—three straight songs on New addressed the same ideas—it is a lovely tune, and tugs the right strings. The poppiest song is “Ripples In A Pond”, an unabashed love song like he hasn’t done in years, but then there’s “Mountain Top”, wherein he’s chatting up a fellow sun-kissed festival-goer. The music revs up apparently when their gummies kick in, giving an image of grandpa skeeving on girls one quarter his age. “Down South” is a rewrite of “Confidante”, musically but not quite lyrically; the earlier song was a guitar, and this one looks back at hitchhiking with George or John. It’s short and simple, whereas “We Two” returns to romantic ruminating. Then, right at the halfway point of the album, we’re treated to the sound of tape rewinding.

“Come Inside” isn’t the most convincing heavy-sounding track, especially as it conjures memories of Egypt Station, but amid the fuzzy guitars are terrifically pounded and tickled acoustic and electric pianos. “Never Know” would seem to be cut from similar cloth as “We Two”, but the little touches in the chorus and especially the recorder solo that heralds the drums for the coda are ultimately rewarding. Ringo Starr appears on a Paul album for the first time in almost thirty years for “Home To Us”, a charming rocker—again, about the old days—built around his drums and an actual duet. Sure, it’s cheesy, but they sound terrific together and we just can’t help grinning, even with the addition of Sheryl Crow and Sharleen Spiteri on extra vocals. “Life Can Be Hard” has him teetering at the top of his register, which somehow works in tandem with the old-fashioned clarinet arrangement. A truly hidden gem is “First Star Of The Night”, another gentle acoustic pick-and-strum inspired by rain on a vacation, with the slightest embellishments. The retro sound, along with a Spanish-sounding trumpet and swing horns, returns to dominate “Salesman Saint”, another look back at his childhood with clever time juxtapositions adding to the dreamlike memory feel. It’s a pointed juxtaposition with the big finale. “Momma Gets By” is a melancholy portrait of another struggling family, but as observed by a child. Unless that’s supposed to be young Mary’s observations from mid-1970, it’s striking imagery, heartrendingly orchestrated, and wholly unexpected.

And there it ends—no joke or afterthought like “Her Majesty”, “Crossroads Theme”, “Cosmically Conscious”, “Nod Your Head”, “I’ve Only Got Two Hands”, etc. Fourteen songs in 47 minutes may seem like a lot, but the album never feels overlong or padded. What makes The Boys Of Dungeon Lane succeed is that, as we’ve tried to point out, every track has a hook that elevates it, making even the more ordinary ones worth hearing. The production is excellent; Watt plays a few instruments, and another guy does the trumpet, but the album does not have the one-man band vibe, even when we know Paul’s doing just about everything else. Basically, the old man’s still got it.

Paul McCartney The Boys Of Dungeon Lane (2026)—3½

Jimi Hendrix 17: Woodstock

He didn’t play until the final morning, after most of the crowd had already left, but thanks to the film, Jimi Hendrix’s appearance at the Woodstock Festival has become legendary. He closed both the movie and the soundtrack album (both released before his death) and had all of side one to himself on Woodstock Two, released the following March.

Jimi was in transition; Billy Cox had replaced Noel Redding on bass, and for this performance he brought along two percussionists plus one Larry Lee—another old Army buddy who’d just returned from Vietnam—on second guitar. Due to comments he made throughout the set, this configuration has been called Gypsy Sun & Rainbows. While the extra musicians may have helped him fill out his sound to his liking in the studio, they couldn’t onstage, and future performances would go back to his tried and true trio format.

Because 1994 was the 25th anniversary of Woodstock, complete with another two festivals taking place that summer, the revitalized estate authorized an official release of Jimi’s performance that day. However, Alan Douglas was still in charge, so he rejigged the setlist and cut the program down to just over an hour so it could fit on a single CD. Everything that was on the original Woodstock albums was included, and in longer versions, but still not complete. It did subtitle “Jam Back At The House” with “Beginnings”, as it was known on other releases, and one of the solos after “Purple Haze” was now correctly titled “Villanova Junction”.

It was more than people had outside of bootlegs, and it was good enough for five years, when the new regime instigated another look, this time under the supervision of Eddie Kramer, who’d recorded the festival in the first place. Live At Woodstock contained most of the performance, now spread across two CDs and in the original sequence, but still without a few drum solos, Larry Lee’s solo spots, as well as some of his guitar solos. Even so, it seems more complete, particularly with all the stage patter left in.

After being erroneously announced as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, he starts by greeting the audience and introducing the musicians, almost apologizing for their lack of preparation. The first music we hear them play is “Message To Love”, making its public debut. “Hear My Train A Comin’” is identified by its alternate title and explored for ten minutes. “Spanish Castle Magic” had already become a jam, but at least the crowd would have heard it before; likewise, “Red House”. Despite having a precise riff, “Lover Man” is pretty straight but threatens to go off the rails, and “Foxy Lady” goes through the verses before letting him blaze out a solo. “Jam Back At The House” was another new funky one that required everyone to pay attention, and they seem to, though Mitch has trouble after his drum solo. “Izabella” was another new one, something of an antiwar love song, followed by tight “Fire”.

This is the point where the set became legendary, and not just because it appeared in the film. “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” is on fire all the way, though he takes it down to introduce the band again. There’s a brief quote of what would soon be known as “Stepping Stone”, and while he repeatedly thanks the crowd, he doesn’t leave the stage, but keeps playing. What should be the last chord of the song turns into “The Star-Spangled Banner”, with only Mitch trying to keep up with him. Then he kicks into “Purple Haze”, wherein he clearly sings “kiss this guy.” Once that ends he solos alone for about four minutes, with only the occasional sound of a tambourine from somebody onstage, eventually coming to “Villanova Junction”. After that they try to leave, but the crowd wants more. Jimi toys with playing another new song, but can’t remember the words, so it’s back to “Hey Joe”.

Live At Woodstock is more historic than it is excellent, and the producers likely did us a favor by smoothing out or omitting the rougher edges. It’s interesting to have some things in proper context, but sometimes it’s easier to print the legend.

Jimi Hendrix Woodstock (1994)—3
Jimi Hendrix Live At Woodstock (1999)—3

Elton John 31: Two Rooms

A multi-disc overview was one way for Elton John to assess his career, but he wasn’t done doing that. Along with the box set trend, thematic tribute albums began to be a thing in the ‘90s. Just as with the Grateful Dead the same year, Two Rooms was an all-star compilation “celebrating the songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin”. Most of the songs were fairly faithful to the original, while still allowing the artists to put their own stamp.

Eric Clapton injects more gospel and a great solo into “Border Song”, then Kate Bush makes “Rocket Man” reggae, albeit with Uillian pipes. Sting’s “Come Down In Time” is a great choice, handled very gently, while the Who plow through “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” with a quote from “Take Me To The Pilot”, just as Elton put “I Can’t Explain” in his version of “Pinball Wizard”. While the photo of the Beach Boys shows Brian Wilson, it’s only Carl, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston singing “Crocodile Rock” over a prerecorded track, while Mike Love chimes in with “re-mem-mem, remember-member”. Fittingly, Wilson Phillips (then still popular) follow with “Daniel”. Joe Cocker does a wonderful job belting out “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word”, unfortunately given a boomy arrangement with in-your-face saxophone. Jon Bon Jovi does a band karaoke version of “Levon”; hearing the American pronunciation of “garage”, jars here.

Tina Turner tackles “The Bitch Is Back” for the second time in her career, and nails it, but while “Philadelphia Freedom” is fitting for Hall & Oates, their reading is pretty limp. Twenty years after recording “Country Comfort”, Rod Stewart goes the safe route with a tepid “Your Song”. Oleta Adams, then riding on a hit single, makes “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” that much more soulful, then Bruce Hornsby takes “Madman Across The Water” to a more gothic place. Sinead O’Connor’s gentle, heartfelt interpretation of “Sacrifice” is possibly the highlight of the album, while Phil Collins’ straight take on “Burn Down The Mission” is mostly notable for Steve Winwood on organ (according to the credits, anyway). George Michael offers a lengthy live “Tonight” with winds and strings, since “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” had already been claimed; his own duet with Elton on the latter from the same show would be released shortly as a single.

Two Rooms was promoted by a feature-length documentary on VHS, followed by an abridged TV special hosted by Sylvester Stallone of all people. The album wasn’t likely to make new fans for these artists, and like most tribute packages, the novelty wears off quickly. Seventeen years later, the concept would be repeated with a pair of albums with the intent of “reimagining the songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin”: Revamp sported covers by modern artists ranging from Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga to the Killers and Queens of the Stone Age, while Restoration was devoted to country artists.

Two Rooms: Celebrating The Songs Of Elton John & Bernie Taupin (1991)—3

Elton John 30: To Be Continued

Having finally achieved sobriety, Elton John was determined to start the ‘90s strong. And since it was becoming the trend for artists of his stature, he got the box set treatment. To Be Continued… not only summed up his career to date on four CDs or cassettes, but precluded him from having to record another album to keep his annual chart appearances going. (The somewhat garish booklet was loaded with photos, an essay, and a joint interview with Elton and Bernie Taupin. Track info was very detailed as to who played what, even providing exact recording dates when available.)

At the time, the box was essential for offering up several songs—mostly B-sides—that would eventually be farmed out as bonus tracks when the individual albums were reissued, and are discussed there. That said, it still tells a full story, starting with “Come Back Baby”, a mildly melodramatic number sung by an 18-year-old Reg Dwight with the Bluesology combo. From there it’s a pretty comprehensive survey of the next 25 years, at roughly eight years per disc, except for the second, which covers 1972 to 1974. Oddly, Tumbleweed Connection is given short shrift; we would have picked “Amoreena” or “Where To Now St. Peter” over “All The Girls Love Alice”. Among the standouts in the rare stuff is a demo of “Your Song” that shows the song practically fully formed. “Step Into Christmas” gains a spot in context, and the run of “One Day At A Time” through “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” to the live “I Saw Her Standing There” gives John Lennon a spotlight. (“Empty Garden” also appears later in the set, as does an hideous “cover” of “Give Peace A Chance” with silly voices sung over part of the track for “I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That”.) An excellent “I Feel Like A Bullet (In The Gun Of Robert Ford)” comes from a series of concerts with only Ray Cooper accompanying him on percussion. The brief “Cartier” is basically an advertising jingle, while “Donner Pour Donner” is a bilingual collaboration with French singer France Gall. “Carla Etude” is an outtake from Live In Australia, and some of the later songs appear in single or dance mixes.

To further entice collectors, To Be Continued… ends with four newly recorded songs, produced by Don Was. “I Swear I Heard the Night Talking” and “Easier To Walk Away” are fairly generic, but “Made For Me” is just plain embarrassing, musically and lyrically (“If I couldn’t see you naked/Oh, I might as well be blind”?) “You Gotta Love Someone” is a better use of Bernie’s list-writing technique, but only slightly. If these songs were supposed to be the springboard for a full album, it’s best that he pulled the plug. To be fair, it’s not the only box set in history that runs out of steam on the last disc.

Elton John To Be Continued… (1990)—3½

Pink Floyd 22: 8-Tracks

The 8-track tape music format dominated the industry for a few decades. These bulky plastic cartridges split an album’s program into four stereo segments, but they didn’t always match the vinyl sequence, or even the sides. In order to cut down on excess silence and conserve actual tape, songs were often shuffled, many times in baffling combinations. From time to time a rare mix would sneak through, but for the most part, the 8-track’s appeal was more from convenience and mobility than pristine fidelity: cars had players, and portable players were available in a variety of designs. By comparison, the cassette’s smaller size was that much more fragile, and the thin tape could threaten to unwind and stretch if you weren’t careful. Even those took liberties with album sequencing, but that’s not important right now. Eventually people decided it was a lot easier to dub albums and songs from the radio onto a cassette, which was just one of the factors that helped hasten 8-track’s demise.

Like most kings of the high school parking lot, Pink Floyd sold a lot of albums on 8-track, and a new compilation of favorites that likely got a lot of play in that format appeared for no real reason, on the heels of the 50th anniversary of Wish You Were Here and its various expansions. Despite the hyphen, 8-Tracks offered exactly that: eight tracks from the ‘70s sequenced and mixed by Steven Wilson, and something of a mutant cousin of A Collection Of Great Dance Songs.

Like that album, it begins with “One Of These Days”, only this time the wind fades into “Wots… Uh The Deal”—a wonderful song, to be sure, but not the most expected choice for a “hits” album. That’s soon taken over by the coins and cash register of “Money”, this time the original track and not the rerecorded version. “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2” is also the extended single mix, with the extra bars at the top and with the schoolmaster’s ranting over the end. “Wish You Were Here” begins from the tuned radio, and its wind at the end turns into the ticking clocks of “Time”. The “Breathe” reprise conveniently ends on the same chord that opens “Comfortably Numb”, and that fades into the sheep sounds to preface “Pigs On The Wing”.

And that right there would seem to be the big deal of this album, from the title to the concept. This is the version of the song that appeared on the 8-track version of Animals—both verses, separated by solo played by auxiliary touring guitarist Snowy White. Why this did not appear in 2018 on that album’s sonic and visual overhaul made no sense, but here it is now. Beyond that, everybody who cares already knows these songs, and might even be tired of them.

Pink Floyd 8-Tracks (2026)—3

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