Gerry O’Keefe: Whatever Suits You

The word “pop” in relation to music has had several connotations over the past fifty years, most of them derogatory. Today it conjures mental images of man-boys with bad haircuts and lithe jailbait writhing or getting implants. Once upon a time, even the Beatles were considered a pop group, before they were appreciated as musicians by those deemed fit to judge such things.

Pop is short for popular, of course, and to be popular in the industry is to be lucrative. Therefore, the songwriters behind all the big faceless hits of the ‘60s in particular had to crank out songs that would appeal to current trends, but because they were craftsmen (and women), they took a certain pride in their work, and strove to create things of lasting merit. They were made to sound good through a single speaker broadcasting AM radio, certainly. Nostalgia doesn’t have to be pathetic, of course.

These days, the purveyors of pop work with ProTools and autotune, and the sounds they create can be as interchangeable as the product that ultimately made Greg Brady decide not to wear Johnny Bravo’s suit. Somewhere among them is a handful of writers who still start with an acoustic guitar, pen and paper to hone their craft.

Gerry O’Keefe understands how it’s done, and is doing his own part trying to reclaim the tradition of the pop craftsman in a sterile atmosphere. His music stems from the example set by the Brill Building types that dominated the top 40 charts of decades past. After many years working in original and cover bands in the Chicago area, his knack for recognizing a solid hook has finally resulted in his very first album under his own name.

Whatever Suits You is an easygoing collection of friendly strums, accented by heartland riffs and understated harmonies. Best of all, the words are as well constructed as the chords. Any modern acoustic troubadour would kill for a song like “Your Brand New Beginning” in their set. It’s easy to imagine songs like “Good When It’s Gone”, “We’ll Call It Hope” and “Stuck, Still, Not Even Slow” on the radio. “The Road That Doesn’t End” gets an extra boost from a simple piano added to the standard guitar-bass-drums combination to accentuate the ache. And good luck getting the Beatles ‘65 twang of “Darlin’ Divine” out of your head once it’s there.

It would seem that people don’t write songs like this anymore, but we know that’s not true; they’re just hard to find. Thankfully, Whatever Suits You is available via the usual online merchants, in download format as well as an actual, tangible CD with artwork, liner notes and everything. It’s one of the nicer surprises of the year.

Gerry O’Keefe Whatever Suits You (2013)—3½

Programming Alert

This blog has been going steady for nearly six years, and there is still plenty of music yet to be tapped, considered and collected. It began as a creative outlet during an employment drought, and has continued despite positive changes to that drought.

When we began, we thought twice a week would work, in the tradition of the two days in the week when we got our main shipments at the CD store. Time and inspiration led us to post three days a week soon after embarking, which led to some truly imaginative scheduling.

The inspiration is still there, but the time is not. Therefore beginning this week, we're going back to that twice-weekly schedule. We hope that dedicated readers will understand; after reviewing about a thousand albums, can anyone accuse us of slacking? Ultimately, quality must be considered before quantity. Besides, it's not like we're stopping completely.

Look for a new post tomorrow, and again on Friday. That's the pattern we'll keep going forward, and should we manage to speed up the output again, everybody wins.

Thanks for reading this far, and please keep spreading the word. Here's to a great new year.

David Crosby 3: Thousand Roads

Only four years after his second solo album, David Crosby appeared with a third installment. Could he really have written an album’s worth of songs in that time?

Unfortunately, as Thousand Roads proved, the answer was a big fat no. Not that it bothered him; he was happy to restrict himself to vocals, not even touching the guitar, and contributed exactly one solo composition in addition to two high-profile co-writes. The obvious selling point was the first single, “Hero”, not only written with Phil Collins but featuring him prominently on vocals. “Yvette In English” is a collaboration with Joni Mitchell, who would release her own version a year later; Crosby’s is laid-back, and a high point. The title track also has promise, something of a dirty blues with minimal drums and electric and acoustic dueling from Andy Fairweather-Low and Bernie Leadon respectively.

Every other song was written by somebody else, all strictly in the adult contemporary mode, yet with sensitive hippie ideals and themes close to his heart. “Too Young To Die” comes from Jimmy Webb, of all people, and is about driving fast, as opposed to Stephen Bishop’s closing tearjerker “Natalie”, about an OD victim. Marc Cohn and John Hiatt, both decent writers whose commercial high points were already behind them, are featured in the first half, and the genre’s favorite unknown songwriter, Paul Brady, gets a spot in the second half, as does a writer who’d recently given a couple of hits to Bonnie Raitt.

Throughout the album, Graham Nash pops up to harmonize with his buddy, and help remind the listener who’s album it is. Anyone looking for a pleasant MOR album for upscale suburban afternoon will enjoy it, but coming from the legacy of David Crosby, even considering CSN’s lightweight tendencies, Thousand Roads is a dead end. (Yeah, we said it.)

Amazingly, his brief promotional tour for the album highlighted two new original songs, both of which appeared on It’s All Coming Back To Me Now…, an entertaining document of a night at the Whisky A Go Go. “Rusty & Blue” is a decent meditation with nice atmospherics by Jeff Pevar, while “Till It Shines On You” would get a full CSN treatment soon enough. Lengthy explorations on tunes from the ‘60s and ‘70s fill out the package, and not only does Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes come out to mewl on “Almost Cut My Hair”, good ol’ Graham Nash shows up for that extra bit of excitement. (The album title mystifies, as it’s likely Crosby hadn’t heard the song that Celine Dion would scream to the top of the charts in a few years’ time.)

David Crosby Thousand Roads (1993)—2
David Crosby It’s All Coming Back To Me Now… (1995)—3

Beatles 33: Bootleg Recordings 1963

When a rumor emerges in Beatlemaniacland, the inhabitants immediately begin picking it apart, seesawing between euphoria and anger, and falling off several times into conjecture and other tangents. So it was that news of a bumper bundle of unreleased material to emerge on iTunes (now that the two companies named Apple were the bestest of buddies) sparked off a week or so of unfounded opinions. Then it was available, then it wasn’t, and then it was again.

Given the title Bootleg Recordings 1963, it’s a little over two hours of material—predominantly BBC radio performances as yet uncollected on an official Apple release, plus several studio outtakes and two demos. In all there are 59 tracks, retailing for 40 bucks American, or 67¢ a song. All of the BBC stuff has been floating around on bootlegs for years, as have the demos, while most of the studio outtakes appear for the first time in stereo.

The studio outtakes come first, peeking into the sessions for the Please Please Me album and follow-up single, and two more from later in the year. Then it’s a haphazard leap into the many radio appearances, tagged with the alleged (and often incorrect) original broadcast date. The usual suspects appear, as well as performances of some of the covers they didn’t put on their albums. If you haven’t had your fill of “A Taste Of Honey”, “Till There Was You” or even “She Loves You”, you might after this. Finally, non-professional recordings of two songs Lennon and McCartney gave away (“Bad To Me” and “I’m In Love”) round out the program.

Lots of collectors balked at spending their iTunes credits on stuff they mostly had, and cursed Apple for “ripping off the fans again”. Which is only true if something was promised and not delivered, and that didn’t happen. By boldly stating that these are bootlegs, that excuses any lack of sound quality. Considering how clean the studio stuff is, that’s not an issue either. It’s also hilarious to hear someone who can only have been familiar with this music thanks to pirates, copyright cheats and outright thieves complain about the rightful owners’ integrity.

Most tantalizing of all is the knowledge that there are several hours’ worth of studio material not included here. So if this was a gambit to protect their copyrights, as has been assumed with the existence of similar Bob Dylan compilations, what is the fate of the rest of the material? Clearly, we haven’t emptied the well.

The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963 (2013)—3
CD availability: none; download only

David Darling: Cycles

The ECM label specializes in jazz with a European bent, though such a generalization is not entirely accurate. The music tends to be very atmospheric and usually experimental, with eclectic cover art to match. When the Windham Hill label started, it was ECM Records they tried to emulate. As a result, and after the fact, ECM has been lumped in with the New Age category. True, there are some similarities between performers and even content, but it’s an unfair dismissal. Trying to describe an ECM record is like dancing clumsily, badly and loudly about Architectural Digest.

Since their inception, the label has boasted many big names in jazz, including Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny. One of their more successful pairings was the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek with the Hilliard Ensemble male vocal quartet. Just because you like one ECM record doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll like another—or any other—but their standard is of such high quality that once you’re in, anything they do is worth checking out. Some of our favorite recordings have emerged this way, including Pat Metheny’s New Chautauqua, Ralph Towner’s Diary, Eberhard Weber’s Later That Evening, Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, The Hilliard Ensemble’s Lamentations Of Jeremiah and Jan Garbarek’s I Took Up The Runes.

Garbarek, a favorite of label owner and producer Manfred Eicher, was essentially the reason why ECM Records got started. In addition to his own vast discography, he appears on many albums in the ECM catalog, including one of the brightest of the hidden gems in the history of music. Cycles is credited to the cellist David Darling, but is essentially an ensemble piece, with prominent contributions on every track from Garbarek, Steve Kuhn on piano, Arild Andersen on bass, Oscar Castro-Neves on guitar, and the late, great Colin Walcott (most famous for his work in Oregon with Ralph Towner) on sitar, tabla and percussion.

The opener, “Cycle Song”, features a series of relative chords in fifths, not dissimilar to “Thanksgiving” from George Winston’s December. The combination of piano and cello was the sound our mind’s ear had heard for years, finally realized. “Cycle One: Namasté” offers a spooky little theme for Garbarek to spring from, and something of a setup for the epic, aptly-titled “Fly”. Side two begins almost abruptly with “Ode”, which was originally recorded under the title “Ode To A Fillmore Dressing Room” on Icarus by the Paul Winter Consort. “Cycle Two: Trio” and “Cycle Three: Quintet And Coda” are lengthy yet engrossing extrapolations on similar themes. The closing “Jessica's Sunwheel” is almost an anticlimax, as it breaks out of the predominantly modal structures of the previous tracks.

This hardly does justice to the experience of hearing the album itself, and Cycles is not for everyone. It works best at dusk, on grey rainy mornings, and particularly on yuletide nights with only the lights of the tree on. The ECM site doesn’t offer audio samples, but Amazon does. Since the label has never gone overboard promoting any of their releases, it’s never been easy to find. We got it as a gift one wonderful Christmas, in a pile of secondhand LPs selected for their importance to the giver in the hope that we’d appreciate them too. And we did. If it resonates with you, Constant Reader, then there’s a chance it might lead to you other wonderful albums as well. Isn’t it great when music does that?

David Darling Cycles (1982)—4

Bob Dylan 56: 50th Anniversary Collection 1963

Well, it happened again, sort of. This time, the assumed record label attempt to either protect their archives, tease the public or both resulted in a six-record set of otherwise uncollected (but mostly bootlegged) Bob Dylan recordings, with limited availability.

This time, however, the studio takes on 50th Anniversary Collection 1963 total exactly six: alternates of “Eternal Circle” and “Percy’s Song”, another extremely sloppy stab at “That’s All Right, Mama” that peters into something called “Sally Free And Easy” before stopping altogether, the slightly more interesting “East Laredo Blues” piano solo, and the legendary unreleased tracks “Hero Blues” and “New Orleans Rag”.

The bulk of the live recordings are of more historic than musical interest. “When The Ship Comes In” at the March on Washington, for example, would be a lot more palatable if it didn’t sound like a news broadcast (and didn’t have Joan Baez yodeling all the way through it). Typical is a 12-song sequence called “The Banjo Tape” (because of one of the accompanists; he appears to have acquired a 12-string). In this seemingly impromptu hootenanny, the most successful songs, and the ones that don’t break down after a minute, happen to be his own compositions.

There’s also the balance of his two legendary New York concerts of the year, at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall. Despite these having already been plundered for various Bootleg Series sets (and in one case, Greatest Hits Vol. II) with pristine sound, having been professionally recorded, the question is begged: why not issue the complete shows in sequence?

Then there are a few lost songs, some better than others. “Ramblin’ Down Through The World” began the Town Hall show, and isn’t much of anything. “Hiding Too Long” is more fascinating, if clumsy. There are a few renditions of “John Brown”, and several of “Only A Pawn In Their Game”.

Like most bootlegs, this isn’t an album sequenced for anything other than posterity, and the multiple takes of less than exciting songs gets tiresome. It still provides a fascinating glimpse at the kid trying to finish his second album and on his way to his third.

Bob Dylan 50th Anniversary Collection 1963 (2013)—3
CD availability: none; LP only

Beatles 32: On Air

It only took the Apple powers that be nineteen years—yes, that long—to release a no-brainer sequel to Live At The BBC. Considering all the work done by bootleggers in the meantime, digging up the best sources and whatnot, On Air, helpfully subtitled Live At The BBC Volume 2, should have been another terrific collection, right?

Well, not exactly. Given the dozens of heretofore officially untapped possibilities, any one Beatlemaniac’s choice is going to be different from another. And when you’ve got the suits involved, they’re going to go for the common denominator, stressing beloved hits over historical rarities.

One of the things that made the 1994 set so exciting was the bumper crop of otherwise unheard Beatles songs—covers, mostly, but still fun. Having used most of those up already, On Air essentially frames an “alternate” Please Please Me (or The Early Beatles, for those of you playing in the U.S.), with all their singles and most B-sides represented as well. Because they repeated several songs throughout their dozens of BBC appearances, 12 songs appear in alternate versions from the first batch, two come from a 1995 EP that all the fans have (plus another alternate here) and the one BBC track on Anthology 1 shows up again too. We’re not about to compare all the different versions, but this particular run through “Glad All Over” here is fairly raucous. Meanwhile, John still sings “small coat” instead of “‘cos my uncle” on “Memphis, Tennessee”.

There are some “new” songs—“Beautiful Dreamer” and Chuck Berry’s “I’m Talkin’ ‘Bout You”, both in fuzzy sound but we’ll take them, and a rockin’ run through “Happy Birthday Dear Saturday Club”—leaving a few still in limbo. The lead track is Buddy Holly’s “Words Of Love”, recorded a year and a half before its appearance on a Beatles LP (and two years before the Americans got it). “Please Mister Postman” is heard with a full stop ending, instead of a fade, and “And I Love Her” is the arrangement we all know, but electric. “Honey Don’t” and “Kansas City”, which appeared in 1963 versions on the first set, come from the more obvious Beatles For Sale era here. They even include an outtake sequence from the recording sessions for the BBC version of “I Feel Fine”.

Naturally, snippets of dialogue and canned chatter sets up several tracks; the excruciating commentary by Lee Peters makes the less-intrusive presence of Brian Matthew all the more welcome. (Beatle historians will wince at the reference to Paul’s upcoming birthday party, as we know that was the occasion that John got drunk and beat up one of their Liverpool buddies.) Each disc ends with a half-hour’s worth of individual interviews with the boys from 1965 and 1966, which, while interesting, lack the exuberance of only a few years before.

Taken all together, On Air is a stretch for two CDs. It could also be that so much of the fun was already spent on the first set (which got a mild facelift the same day) so that the potential riches to be were inevitably been diluted. It’s still the Beatles, and it’s still fun. But you’ll still listen to the other one more.

The Beatles On Air—Live At The BBC Volume 2 (2013)—3

Van Morrison 22: The Best Of Van Morrison

One of the smartest things the PolyGram record company did was to finagle distribution of the Island label, which ensured massive profits from worldwide sales of U2 and Bob Marley. In fact, proceeds from the latter’s posthumous Legend compilation would be enough to sustain any number of third-world economies.

The other smart thing they did was to release The Best Of Van Morrison. Now it was easy for college kids, children of hippies and general music fans to bond to something other than the same three Steve Miller, James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett greatest hits CDs.

Even if you don’t fit into that category, and good for you if you don’t, The Best Of Van Morrison is still an excellent teaser for the gems to be found deep within the man’s still-growing catalog. Along with the obvious hits—“Brown Eyed Girl”, “Moondance”, “Domino”, “Wild Night” and “Gloria”, one of three songs from the Them days—this filled-to-capacity collection includes other songs that may not have been hits, but still qualify as some of his “best”. And they cover over two decades of work, too—two songs each from Into The Music, Beautiful Vision, Poetic Champions Compose and Avalon Sunset and hitting every major album before and in between. And even if you already know and love those albums, whoever was in charge made sure to include the relatively rare “Wonderful Remark”, originally written in the early ‘70s, and finally appearing in a grand Robbie Robertson production for a Scorsese soundtrack in 1983.

While it’s easy to quibble over what was left out—we’d gladly swap “Dweller On The Threshold”, “Whenever God Shines His Light” and “Did Ye Get Healed?” for “Tupelo Honey”, “Wavelength” and a player to be named later—The Best Of Van Morrison lives up to its title, and likely expanded his commercial viability for the decade to come. Which was a good thing, since he was still making albums.

Van Morrison The Best Of Van Morrison (1990)—5

Lou Reed 28: Le Bataclan

One of those gray-area releases that always seemed to turn up over the years was a one-off performance for French television that reunited the first three people to leave the Velvet Underground. Le Bataclan ‘72 spotlights Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico at a time when none of them were particularly visible, and certainly not commercially viable.

Lou had just recorded his first solo album, and had yet to fall into the Bowie circle, so he delivers some sleepy acoustic renditions of his old and new material—“Black Angel’s Death Song” is particularly striking in this format—before stepping aside to shakily strum behind the other two. Cale does three songs, two of which were never otherwise recorded, and then Nico sings a serviceable “Femme Fatale” before dragging her harmonium out to accompany her unique brand of lieder.

This can be startling if you’ve never heard it before, but basically, after the chamber pop of her Chelsea Girls album in 1967, the Teutonic titwillow started writing her own songs to the seesawing accompaniment of the aforementioned harmonium, which were then helped onto wax by Cale. And while they may seem to be simple two-finger noodlings, she still manages to sound convincing. Whatever these songs are about, they mean something to her.

For the sake of preserving history, a full minute of Nico coughing is not edited out, perhaps to excuse whatever might go wrong with “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, which is good because nothing does. She even comes back to sing lead on a jaunty rendition of “All Tomorrow’s Parties”.

Amazingly, for all the time spent tuning between songs, they never seem to find the right pitch. This is even sadly apparent on the snippets of “rehearsals” stuck on the end of the disc. Both happen to be songs from the third VU album, so perhaps this was the first Cale and Nico had heard them.

As with many bootlegs gone official, this doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Still, it’s a fascinating snapshot of Lou the troubadour, with giant hair and less attitude. YouTube clips abound, for easy sampling, teasing and/or repelling, depending on where you stand or sit.

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Le Bataclan ‘72 (2004)—2½

Neil Young 47: Cellar Door and Carnegie Hall

One of the selling points for the Blu-ray version of Neil’s Archives box was that it provided the capability to download additional material as it became available. His rationale was that if he discovered something he considered Archive-worthy, it would go right into the virtual filing cabinet around which the project was formatted. And for the better part of a year, right around each month’s full moon, a new item would pop up to add to the pile of music already contained in the set. Since then, nothing. (And after the official Archives website was launched, that became the repository for material old and new.)

In a move guaranteed to irritate those Blu-ray owners, Live At The Cellar Door, compiled from six shows over three days late in 1970, emerged as a standalone CD. This installment of his Performance Archive Series (dubbed “2.5” to go between the already-established 2 and 3) was recorded a whopping six weeks prior to the shows sampled for Live At Massey Hall. Given that this period had been well mined—“See The Sky About To Rain” having already appeared on the box—and folks were clamoring for any news on the status of Archives Vol. II and beyond, this disc may have seemed redundant to those of us without Blu-ray players. Were these solo acoustic performances really that different from any others, in the way that shows by the likes of, for example, the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, or even Neil with Crazy Horse might have been?

Luckily, they are a little different. “Expecting To Fly” receives a nice treatment at the piano, for example. So does, amazingly, “Cinnamon Girl”, so often associated with electric fuzz, and here with an intro resembling that of “After The Gold Rush”, which is likely the reason for the spontaneous applause. He acknowledges that he never did it that way before, and it’s pretty clear why. In fact, half of the album is a showcase for his “almost a year” of piano playing.

Given the between-song “raps” that dotted similar releases, Live At The Cellar Door mostly sticks to the music, except for a three-minute detour before “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong”. The prelude is punctuated by his fingers messing with the piano strings to comic effect, while the song itself travels from sorrowful to jaunty and back. It’s one performance that makes the album worth owning.

Ever oblivious to a marketing study, eight years later Neil chose to inaugurate his Official Bootleg Series with a show recorded at Carnegie Hall within days of the Cellar Door shows. With the idea that he’d replicate classic vinyl boots with original artwork but optimal sound, in this case the boot in question preserved the second of two performances, while the one he put out was the first.

Unlike many of the shows he’s released lately, this one is a complete performance, 23 songs running to two CDs, split right where the intermission occurred. In addition to songs heard on Cellar Door, “Wonderin’” is given a pleasant acoustic reading, “The Loner” is similar to the 4 Way Street arrangement (but not in a medley), and “Southern Man” is just as frenzied stripped down. “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” is transferred to piano, and there’s a nice little exploratory acoustic passage before “Dance Dance Dance” that sounds almost like “Music Is Love”. “Sugar Mountain” gets interrupted a few times because the crowd won’t clap in rhythm or sing along. A lot of banter is left in, including further admonishments of the crowd. (The similarity of his piano intros is the source of one such exchange.) Were this title available before Cellar Door, it would be preferable, but it wasn’t, so there it is.

Neil Young Live At The Cellar Door (2013)—3
Neil Young Carnegie Hall 1970 (2021)—3

Traffic 5: Welcome To The Canteen

Now that Traffic was back, they expanded to add Ric Grech (most recently of Blind Faith) on bass, Jim Gordon (ditto from Derek & The Dominoes) on drums, and the inimitably named Reebop Kwaku Baah on percussion. (With those two pounding the rhythm, Jim Capaldi retired to the tambourine, and stayed there.) By the time they recorded gigs for a potential live album, Dave Mason was back in the band, again, and he takes a center role on Welcome To The Canteen.

A crisp rendition of “Medicated Goo” opens the album, then Mason steps forward for “Sad And Deep As You”, an overly sensitive strum that makes a nice transition into “40,000 Headmen”. That becomes a lengthy acoustic jam, then Mason comes back with the repetitive yet still mesmerizing “Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave” (thanks to Stevie’s organ part).

Side two is made for jamming, with about ten minutes each devoted to “Dear Mr. Fantasy” (which is always a matter of personal taste) and “Gimme Some Lovin’”, rearranged with a “Get Back”-style gallop. Considering the glut of live albums hitting the marketplace (and this blog, no less), your endurance of this segment will be a matter of personal taste.

When Welcome To The Canteen was released, the cover and label credited the seven (!) individuals who made up the band at the time of recording. Later reissues, reflecting that the ensemble (save Mason) went on to record as Traffic, used that name on the spine and elsewhere, so that’s how it’s credited now. It’s still an intriguing little sidestep in the netherworld between actual Traffic albums.

Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Dave Mason, Chris Wood, Rick Grech, “Reebop” Kwaku Baah, Jim Gordon Welcome To The Canteen (1971)—3

Allman Brothers 3: Fillmore East

Labels were a lot more patient with their acts once upon a time. The first two Allman Brothers Band albums hadn’t exactly lit up the charts, but they were a hard-workin’ band, and having built a following at the Fillmore East in New York City, somebody had the bright idea to record their next album there. And they did, and everybody was happy—band, management, consumers, even the roadies on the back cover. At Fillmore East is designed to show the band at their intricate best, leaning on their trademark lengthy jams. That had already been established with the studio LPs, but double live albums threw any rules out the window.

Side one kicks in well with the ancient “Statesboro Blues” (a classic) and brings on their friend Thom Doucette to blow harp on the not-nearly-as-ancient “Done Somebody Wrong”. As they often prefaced their music with a little history, both Bobby “Blue” Bland and T-Bone Walker are acknowledged for giving them “Stormy Monday”, but from the guitar to that Hammond organ, it’s all theirs now. Side two is devoted to “You Don’t Love Me”, taken at such a steady gallop that you wonder how they’ll fill the side. The solution? Duane. He takes advantage of the space provided to go off on his own for a few minutes, and bring the band back behind him. He even throws in a few bars of “Joy To The World”, which is a little odd for March. The side fades just as “Whipping Post” rumbles up, but that will have to wait.

Side three showcases their jazz influences. One might expect something called “Hot ‘Lanta” to be a typical southern rock boogie, and one would be wrong. Rather, it’s a clever setup for the extended take on “In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed”; this one goes for over 12 minutes, and ends up as tight as ever. Finally, side four is all about “Whipping Post”, though apparently not the one started at the end of side two. Wikipedia features a lengthy description of the peaks and valleys here, so we’ll just leave it by saying that it’s fairly phenomenal. If you listen closely at the fade, you’ll hear another tune that will rear its head soon enough.

As live albums go, At Fillmore East is worthy of its heralded status; you just have to be really into guitars to get it. The band would revisit these shows soon enough, which will be explained in this space eventually. Needless to say, its compact disc history has become quite confusing. Its initial double-CD package was redundant once the industry made room for everything on one. In 1992, just in time for the band’s own renaissance as a recording, touring entity, The Fillmore Concerts augmented the original album with previously released performances from these and a later show to fill two discs. The next century brought forth a Deluxe Edition of the original album that resequenced The Fillmore Concerts to approximate the actual setlist and original mixes, but added another song from the later show. Finally, 2014 brought The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings, consisting of all four March shows plus the final June show, which was previously on the Deluxe Edition from their next album, but that’s another story. Therefore, there’s plenty more to love if you love this.

The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East (1971)—4
1992 The Fillmore Concerts: same as 1971, plus 5 extra tracks
2003 Deluxe Edition: same as 1992, plus 1 extra track

Paul McCartney 33: New

For a man oozing with so much creativity, Paul McCartney’s never been praised for his clever album titles. For every Tug Of War, Band On The Run or even McCartney II there’s such cringe-inducers as Back To The Egg, Memory Almost Full and Kisses On The Bottom. And now, this. It’s a good thing that the quality of any McCartney album doesn’t depend solely on its title, or else we’d have to write off New immediately.

Much was made of how this was his first “rock” album in six years, coming as it did on the heels of Kisses. But that ignores the inspiration that went into creating the Fireman album, and the quality of what came out of it. Another antecedent would be Chaos And Creation In The Backyard, which had one young hot producer at the helm; New has four such names, two of them direct progeny of previous, legendary collaborators.

Interestingly, these young producers deliver sounds that hearken back to decades earlier, whether or not McCartney’s lyrics constantly look back. The charms of “Save Us” have to fight an insistent fuzzy guitar part, and even through the drums sound canned, it’s a catchy opener. “Alligator”, with its pleas for someone to “save me” makes a redundant choice to put next, but it’s soon forgotten. As with his last “rock” album, he takes the opportunity to evoke his own past, covertly in “On My Way To Work” (sung from the point of view of the same bus in “A Day In The Life”) and overtly in “Early Days”. In the middle is “Queenie Eye”, another jaunty track with a seemingly nonsense lyric that is so irresistibly catchy you can’t help shake your head and smile. The title track incorporates a “Penny Lane” march in something of an homage, likely unintentional, to The Rutles’ “Doubleback Alley”.

The second half of the album has a more unpredictable sound. “Appreciate” takes a few plays to, well, appreciate, mixing his ‘80s tendencies with modern touches. “Everybody Out There” is a strange cousin to “Mrs. Vandebilt” musically—it’s not a stretch to imagine Linda happily yelling “hey” at all the right spots—if the lyrics are a bit forced. Built on drones and loops, “Hosanna” is basically a one-man operation that sounds like it took as long to write as it did to record; here it serves as a palette cleanser before the more upbeat if unsubstantial “I Can Bet” and “Looking At Her”, which sounds a lot longer than it is. With an intro that brings to mind “It’s Raining Men” when it returns for its crescendo, “Road” doesn’t have quite enough drama for a finale.

But in this era of “deluxe” editions around the world, which add various bonuses, whether audio, visual or tchotchke, to a “standard” edition, it was a moot argument. Most McCartney fans would have gone for any of the packages that added more music anyway. “Turned Out” sounds halfway between an early-‘80s George Harrison track and a late ‘80s McCartney track, and would have made a decent B-side if they hadn’t been made obsolete of bonus tracks. “Get Me Out Of Here” is an innocuous little strum, making reference to the celebrity reality show of the same name. (Another track, the more experimental “Struggle”, only came out in Japan.) Unlisted on the cover of any edition but indexed separately is “Scared”—not a John Lennon solo cover, but a show of vulnerability with a suitably frightened piano part. It makes for a sobering end.

No matter what anyone tries to say, New is not a grand statement, or even one of his more important albums. It is, however, proof that for all his talents and hobbies, Paul McCartney still gets a kick out of making records. A few of these songs will likely appear in the slightly modified setlist of his next handful of concerts, and they’ll be replaced with whatever he chooses to include from his next album.

So it’s just his New album. Long may he run.

Paul McCartney New (2013)—3

Coldplay 1: Parachutes

Well before a Seth Rogen movie made them a homophobic punchline, there was a certain “guilty pleasure” aspect to Coldplay. They were a band that wasn’t at all cool to like, yet grew immensely popular with each album. The formula seemed simple enough: combine the angst of Radiohead with the stadium appeal of U2. They weren’t the first to try that in the wake of OK Computer and the absence of a late-‘90s Joshua Tree, but they were able to coast on it for a while.

In fact, much of the backlash on the band seemed to arise after that Seth Rogen movie, as people tried to figure out what was so annoying about the band. Listening to their debut today, it’s clear who the band is, even though singer Chris Martin hadn’t met Gwyneth Paltrow yet, or perched himself at the front of too many stages playing piano, or doomed his bandmates to the same anonymity that befell the members of Matchbox 20, Maroon 5 or Counting Crows that weren’t Rob Thomas, Adam Levine or Adam Duritz, respectively.

What makes Parachutes such a good album—that is, unless, you hate Coldplay—is its simple dedication to songs, played with a minimum of bombast. This isn’t the type of thing you’d expect to hear played by a local band in the corner of a club, but move that scenario to a small theater and it fits better. Clearly, these guys had ambition.

Ultimately, four of the songs were hit singles. Of those, the biggest (and best) were “Yellow”, which is about as loud as they got at this point, and “Trouble”, which would find its way into any number of MTV reality shows to illustrate someone’s unique strain of inner turmoil. “Yellow” in particular demonstrates perfection in simplicity, another case where changes you’ve heard countless times can form something stirring, whatever the hell he’s on about. “Trouble” was enough to keep him writing at the piano, ensuring a decent formula for future hits—best exhibited here in the closing “Everything’s Not Lost”. “Shiver” is an admitted Jeff Buckley homage, but only if you think about it, while “Don’t Panic” (itself re-recorded from an earlier EP) goes by awfully quick.

The album could even be slotted into the folk-rock category of adult alternative, as demonstrated by the slower, moodier “Spies”, “Shiver” and “We Never Change”. One song that seems of its own breed is “High Speed”, which makes sense, since it was one of the earliest songs the band had completed; its placement on the album provides a nice change of mood. And there’s even a “hidden” track, which they’d do again.

This is not meant to convert anyone on the opposite side. We were originally drawn to the band on the basis of “Yellow”—or more specifically, its video—and were very pleased with the rest of the album. And it’s refreshing to throw it on again all these years and generations later to find that it’s still pretty good.

Coldplay Parachutes (2000)—4

Beach Boys 15: Good Vibrations

After the fans had scooped up the Capitol two-fers, with their collective bounty of bonus tracks, and sprang for the ‘70s reissues, which had no bonuses, was that it for the Beach Boys? Heck no. They needed a box set, and they got one.

With artwork supposed to suggest a surfboard but instead resembled plywood (but still not as hideous as the painting used to decorate the individual jewel boxes), Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys served up five discs full of music, including over fifty previously unreleased tracks. As with most box sets covering such a long career, the earliest discs cover the fewest years, leaving the remainder to race through the decades. There could well be somebody thrilled to have “Kokomo” on the same disc as “Sail On Sailor”, but we haven’t met them.

Indeed, due to their productivity and quality, discs one and two cover 1961 through 1966, including all the hits starting from their very first pre-Capitol single, in their original single mixes as opposed to album mixes. Things get really interesting towards the end of the first disc, presenting a slightly compact overview of Brian’s development as a producer and arranger. But a key enticement for buyers was the 30 minutes of Smile-related music on the second disc. Most of this had never been heard in this form, and even at that advanced date the compilers still hadn’t quite figured out where everything was supposed to fit. (It’s not always easy to tell where “Heroes And Villains” stops and “Do You Like Worms” begins; also, what’s called an intro to “H&V” is really the prelude to “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow”, which people still thought had been destroyed.) Covering the period from “California Girls” through Pet Sounds and just slightly beyond, disc two is likely the one owners play most.

And from there, it’s not quite as dreamy. Disc three valiantly covers up to the Surf’s Up album, choosing some of the more tuneful selections from that period. Disc four jumbles the chronology just a bit to begin with “Sail On Sailor”, and proceeds through the rest of the ‘70s and what there was of the ‘80s to demonstrate what they did after Endless Summer kept them in business. Among the more interesting rarities are Brian’s “Fairy Tale Music” from the Holland bonus EP without the narration, and some samples from the orchestrated solo album he didn’t finish. Finally, the fifth disc, an assortment of session extracts, vocal- or music-only mixes and oddments, lays a foundation for the Pet Sounds Sessions and Smile Sessions sets to come.

As with the entire catalog revamp, the Good Vibrations box is well done and comprehensive. The liner notes very kindly supply what songs came from what albums and when they charted, and even include references to the various compilations that came out in between, making sure geeks like us have everything we need in context. The compilers also worked closely with Brian, who apparently refused to allow “Let Him Run Wild” to be included for reasons known only to him. It may be typical to say, but the Smile material made it worth the purchase, if not essential until the later period got its own best-of CD. Unfortunately, the box didn’t clear out the vaults, either, as further rarities sets added on to the pile, as did another box set 20 years later.

The Beach Boys Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys (1993)—3½