Steely Dan 9: Alive In America

For most of their career, Steely Dan were strictly a studio band, having eschewed touring as soon as they could. Now it was 20 years later, both Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had solo albums to promote, and technology had caught up with their perfectionism to the point where they could hire sidemen (and women) to replicate their pristine album tracks onstage for those with the disposable income required to watch and hear them do it.

Alive In America was compiled from two of these ‘90s tours—Peter Erskine drummed on the first, Dennis Chambers played on the second—and presents over an hour of music in a seamless blend by long-suffering engineer Roger Nichols. As would be expected, everything is presented well, with the only real surprise being the inclusion of “Book Of Liars” from Becker’s album. “Sign In Stranger” has different lyrics on the bridge and something of an extended interlude, “Reelin’ In The Years” sports a vamped intro that disguises the song before the crowd recognizes it, and “Third World Man” is taken even slower. Hot as these players are, we’d still rather listen to the version of “Bodhisattva” that was the belated B-side to “Hey Nineteen”. Still, to finally get to hear these songs performed live for what was then the first time would be a thrill for fans. (Outside of the head-scratching cover, the packaging is suitably sardonic, from the song comments—helpful for identifying which guitarist or horn player gets to solo—to the “Howl” parody.)

While Steely Dan would continue to tour, even becoming something of a fixture on the road, they wouldn’t release another live album for another 25 years, after Walter had passed on and Donald was still pounding the boards against the wishes and financial claims of his former partner’s estate. He was nice enough to dedicate Northeast Corridor: Steely Dan Live!, exclamation point and all, to Walter. While the band was completely different this time out, and he’s even more nasal than ever, the album repeats half of Alive In America, with little varying from the token arrangements, save maybe the new coda to “Kid Charlemagne”. The rest of the program features more ‘70s classics, plus “Things I Miss The Most” from their last album and closing with “A Man Ain’t Supposed To Cry”, likely copped from the Joe Williams version. Probably to reflect streaming habits, each selection is faded to silence before the next track starts.

Since it’s worth mentioning somewhere, back in 2002 Becker and Fagen made an appearance on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz radio show, which was among the many installments to get a subsequent official release. As was the format, the show consists of conversation interspersed with performances, wherein the guys are backed by a simple rhythm section and joined occasionally by their host. Of their own songs they play “Josie”, “Chain Lightning”, and “Black Friday”, but more interesting are the standards they tackle, three of which were associated with Duke Ellington. It’s also nice to hear Walter play guitar rather than ceding it to somebody else.

Steely Dan Alive In America (1995)—3
Steely Dan Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz (2005)—3
Steely Dan Northeast Corridor: Steely Dan Live! (2021)—3

Rickie Lee Jones 6: Pop Pop

Female vocalists doing standards albums had become a thing by the ‘90s, but anyone who’d paid attention to Rickie Lee Jones since her initial emergence shouldn’t have been surprised by Pop Pop. What does make it stand out from, say, Linda Ronstadt’s work with Nelson Riddle or Natalie Cole’s tribute to her own father was her approach. On most of the tracks she’s accompanied by Robben Ford on a nylon string guitar, with subtle standup bass from either Charlie Haden or John Leftwich. A bandoneon appears, as does an occasional sax, but for the most part it’s all very quiet.

Her renditions of warhorses like “My One And Only Love” and “Bye Bye Blackbird” are nice and not at all blasphemous. “The Second Time Around” has the softest violin solo we’ve ever heard. However, “Dat Dere” is already based on baby talk, so we don’t need the sound of cooing infants in the mix. (“I Won’t Grow Up” is more effective in the overall context.) So when she springs Hendrix’s “Up From The Skies” on us, it fits right in. Producer David Was—the other guy in Was (Not Was) that’s not Don Was—gets extra royalties by contributing “Love Junkyard”, which is the loudest the album gets, with the most players, and the closest to her own classic sound. Jefferson Airplane’s “Comin’ Back To Me”, taken even more delicately than the original, provides a truly haunting finale.

Rickie Lee Jones Pop Pop (1991)—3

Frank Zappa 54: The Yellow Shark

Throughout his entire career, all Frank Zappa wanted was to work with a collective that was not only capable of playing his more sophisticated musical pieces, but enthusiastic about doing so, and willing to help finance them to fruition. In 1991, he found one in Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt-based outfit that dove into the challenge. Compositions old and new were arranged and tweaked, culminating in a series of concerts entitled The Yellow Shark. An album culled from these shows was released one month before Zappa succumbed to prostate cancer.

As his classical-type albums go, it’s enjoyable unless you don’t like classical-type albums. Following a brief introduction by the composer (who was too sick to do much of the actual conducting) they go into “Dog Breath Variations” and “Uncle Meat”, both also familiar from previous orchestral excursions. “Outrage At Valdez” was written for a Jacques Cousteau documentary about the Exxon oil spill in 1989, and is suitably grave; along the same lines, two different pieces called “Times Beach” refer to a different chemical emergency that affected ordinary folks. One of the more daring pieces is “The Girl In The Magnesium Dress”, originally composed and played on the Synclavier but here executed by actual people who could replicate the sound of cats running up and down piano keyboards and vibraphones simultaneously. “Ruth Is Sleeping” had a similar birth, but is slightly more musical. “Be-Bop Tango” gets a chance to breathe without the choreographed distractions of the Roxy era.

The four movements from “None Of The Above”, a string quartet originally written for and performed by the Kronos Quartet, appear in a different order than supposedly written, and aren’t immediately melodic. Because he never wrote a skit he didn’t want to perform, this album has two. “Food Gathering In Post-Industrial America, 1992” is recited by a female viola player, punctuated by the sounds of mechanical sewage; then the federal customs form is the basis for “Welcome To The United States”, read in a thick German accent with comical vocal and instrumental responses from the band. (“Louie Louie” makes an appearance.) It’s followed by “Pound For A Brown” and “Exercise #4”, another Uncle Meat refugee. Despite its title—derived from an early version that used only the white keys on the piano—“Get Whitey” is very melodic and almost pretty. Finally, “G-Spot Tornado” is another Synclavier piece newly arranged, and it’s excellent. Still, it would be nice to have something after the nearly two-minute standing ovation at the end.

The Yellow Shark would not be the last major work he completed before his death, but it certainly got a lot of attention. For several years his estates teased a sequel of sorts; when Everything Is Healing Nicely finally appeared, it turned out to be something of an “audio documentary” of the ensemble’s earliest rehearsals and experiments with him. Moreso than The Yellow Shark, it’s generally for completists, beginning as it does with “Library Card”, mostly recited in German with Lumpy Gravy-style accompaniment. (“Master Ringo” and “Wonderful Tattoo” use a genital piercing enthusiast magazine for their lyric sources.) Luckily, the rest is a lot less silly.

“This Is A Test” is a brief experiment that deserved to be further developed, while “Jolly Good Fellow” is a conducted improvisation that plays on that familiar melody. “Roland’s Big Event/Strat Vindaloo” is a clarinet solo followed by Frank duetting on guitar with L. Shankar. “T’Murshi Duween” is a Roxy-era piece that usually followed “Penguin In Bondage” and would have been very well received at the shows. The appropriately titled “Nap Time” is based around the Alpine horn while two Japanese poems are recited quietly in the background. “9/8 Objects” features more L. Shankar, and “Naked City” is something of a guitar concerto (not played by Frank). “Whitey (Prototype)” is a brief rehearsal, while “None Of The Above (Revised & Previsited)” juxtaposes a rehearsal with live performance. “Amnerika Goes Home” also comes from the concerts, being an arrangement of a Synclavier piece used as bedding on Thing-Fish.

Between the two albums there is some very enjoyable music showing another side of Frank, but one must endure some of his more idiosyncratic tendencies to get to them. It’s a shame the collaboration didn’t get to go further.

Zappa/Ensemble Modern The Yellow Shark (1993)—3
Zappa Everything Is Healing Nicely (1999)—3

Jimi Hendrix 10: The Jimi Hendrix Concerts

Alan Douglas was still in charge of the Hendrix vaults, and following his controversial reimagining of leftovers, he did something of a service with a pair of compilations. The Essential Jimi Hendrix was a two-record set that sampled the first three albums chronologically, ending with tracks from the first three posthumous studio albums. A year later, Volume Two offered one side of songs from the first album plus “Crosstown Traffic”, while the other served up “Wild Thing” from Monterey, “Machine Gun” from Band Of Gypsys, and “Star Spangled Banner” from Woodstock. A bonus one-sided 45 featured a previously unreleased cover of “Gloria”. Basically the Hendrix equivalent of the Red and Blue albums, they provided a good introduction. (Both volumes would make it to a combined double CD in 1989, the studio tracks re-arranged chronologically and ending with the live tracks and “Gloria”.)

For his next trick, Douglas went back to the vaults for something of a sequel to Hendrix In The West. Labeled on the back over as “a collection of his most exciting performances”, The Jimi Hendrix Concerts was another double album, mixing tracks from eight different concerts over three years. In addition to the soon-to-be familiar sources of Berkeley, the Albert Hall, and San Diego, four shows from his 1968 residency at San Francisco’s Winterland Arena were utilized for the first time.

Following an introduction from Bill Graham, that’s where “Fire” comes from, then it’s over to San Diego the next year for Mitch Mitchell’s extended intro to “I Don’t Live Today”. Jimi stretches out on this one too, with a detour into “Star Spangled Banner” and then quoting from “Tomorrow Never Knows”. A year after that, it’s “Red House” from the New York Pop Festival. “Stone Free” had already been extended onstage past its radio-friendly length, and here goes for ten (edited) minutes. It leads well into the freakout intro for “Are You Experienced”.

There’s been a lot of fancy fretwork so far, which makes the comparative restraint in “Little Wing” very welcome. We hear just a few notes of “You Got Me Floatin’”, a song never otherwise known to be played live, then it’s into a furious “Voodoo Chile [sic] (Slight Return)”. “Bleeding Heart”, here subtitled “Blues In C Sharp”, is slow and sinewy. “Hey Joe” comes from Berkeley, one of his last concerts, and they apparently couldn’t do anything about the radio interference in the first verse. “Wild Thing” descends into chaos fairly quickly, and “Hear My Train A Comin’” (here subtitled “Gettin’ My Heart Back Together Again”) ends it all with another long blues.

To make The Jimi Hendrix Concerts a listenable experience (sorry) for newbies and collectors alike, Douglas edited out some jamming and drum solos, and used echo as well as stage patter from San Diego throughout to add to the mirage. But even despite the range of sources—and Billy Cox instead of Noel Redding on two tracks—it worked. (This too was released in CD in 1989, sporting a bonus track in “Foxey Lady” from the LA Forum, an addition that would add even more value to the box set that came out a year later. All are out of print now, so it’s moot.)

Jimi Hendrix The Essential Jimi Hendrix (1978)—4
Jimi Hendrix The Essential Jimi Hendrix Volume Two (1979)—4½
Jimi Hendrix The Jimi Hendrix Concerts (1982)—4
1989 CD reissue: same as 1982, plus 1 extra track
Current CD equivalent(s): none