Robyn Hitchcock 2: Groovy Decay

Just when he was off to something of a good start, Robyn immediately derailed his momentum with his next album. He’s gone on the record as saying that the ordeal of completing it sent him into a self-imposed two-year exile.

So is Groovy Decay that bad? Well, it certainly isn’t very good. The album is harsh and cold, heavy on saxophones. Being the early ‘80s, it seems designed for dancing by the types of people sporting Robyn’s haircut and polka-dot shirts. Some songs stand out, particularly “Fifty Two Stations”, “America” and “The Cars She Used To Drive”. “Night Ride To Trinidad” is an inferior copy of “Grooving On An Inner Plane”, but at least “St. Petersburg” provides quieter contrast.

Three years later, once he’d got his bearings back, he released a rejigged version of the album. Now called Groovy Decoy, it not only changed the track order, but substituted five of the tracks with earlier demo versions produced by Soft Boy Matthew Seligman. It added two old B-sides into the mix—“It Was The Night” and the wacky “How Do You Work This Thing?” It still wasn’t an improvement on the earlier version. We’d almost say the best songs are the ones which weren’t recorded twice, but that’s not always the case.

Rhino, being the good completists that they are, convinced him to combine the two Groovy albums on one jam-packed disc. Gravy Deco brought everything together under the same roof (with the exception of the alternate “Grooving On A Inner Plane”, which had been put back in the context of Black Snake Diamond Role) and added two more obscure mixes. Which was nice of them, but no matter how you slice it, these recordings simply aren’t very enjoyable.

Robyn’s hatred of the album continued to this century, where following the Yep Roc reissue program it’s only available as a download—naturally, missing one song from the canon (the demo of “Midnight Fish” from Decoy) and in its place, the decent “Falling Leaves”, which had been a highlight of an earlier rarities collection. So if you really want Groovy Decay, you can get it. But once you’ve had it, you may well wonder if it was worth the bother.

Robyn Hitchcock Groovy Decay (1982)—2
Robyn Hitchcock Groovy Decoy (1985)—2
Robyn Hitchcock Gravy Deco (1995)—2
Current CD equivalent: none; download only

Todd Rundgren 3: The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren

He’d gotten the recording bug, so Todd Rundgren went back to the studio first chance he got. While it starts out with a midtempo rocker of sorts, Runt: The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren has much more of an emphasis on slower, piano-based songs, as one would expect to come from the guy on the cover with the noose around his neck.

Indeed, “Long Flowing Robe” is something of a palate cleanser before “The Ballad (Denny & Jean)”, a tearjerking, absolutely heartbreaking tale of love torn apart by success. “Bleeding” is dominated by a very affected guitar sound, and while “Wailing Wall” is very pretty, it doesn’t do much with the metaphor of the found title. Speaking of which, “The Range War” is something of a clever cowboy song sung by a city slicker, but even that is bested by “Chain Letter”, which begins “Don’t take yourself so seriously” and goes on to describe the writing of the song itself in real time, building and building to an exhilarating conclusion.

It’s those pretty piano tunes on side two and inspired again by his current fave Laura Nyro that lodge themselves in your cerebral cortex and won’t get out no matter how hard you shake your head. “A Long Time, A Long Way To Go” is a trifle on par with the first McCartney album, while “Boat On The Charles” looks at how to deal with lost love from another angle altogether. “Be Nice To Me” and “Hope I’m Around” are wonderful additions to the kiss-off canon. “Parole” is another rockin’ excuse for a metaphor, and “Remember Me” is a brief grovel for posterity closing the album.

Given the Runt in the title, it’s still unclear who or what exactly it is. Only Tony Sales appears on the bulk of the album, with N.D. Smart replacing Hunt on most tracks, and Jerry Scheff and John Guerin on two others. And of course, Todd plays everything else, even the drums, an idea he’d take to a further extreme on his next album, along with journeys in other directions.

Todd Rundgren Runt: The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren (1971)—3½

Tom Petty 16: Highway Companion

By now it should be clear that a Tom Petty solo album isn’t going to sound radically different from a Heartbreakers album, but we should still notice that they’re not around. His third such release, Highway Companion, at least restricts the guests to just Mike Campbell on lead guitar (naturally) and returns the producer credit to Jeff Lynne.

Thankfully, it doesn’t sound like a Jeff Lynne production, though with the drums handled by Petty himself—the jury’s still out on if they’re canned or live—it’s a moot point. “Flirting With Time” and “Ankle Deep” are the closest to that hit sound, though our hero’s voice is more off-pitch than ever. The homemade feel of the album is best displayed on “Jack”, which sounds like it took longer to play than to write, but it does have an excellent nod to Love’s “Bummer In The Summer” where the choruses should go. “Night Driver” has an intriguing mood, but it happens two tracks after he’d already threatened to “Turn This Car Around”.

Tom hasn’t been as prolific as he gets older, and we’re starting to think he either works better faster or has run out of new ideas. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that really leaps above the rest. There aren’t any home runs of the like that distinguished even such so-so albums as Long After Dark and Echo. To make matters worse, he’s even recycling his own songs; “Big Weekend” is “Yer So Bad” meets “To Find A Friend”, and “Damaged By Love”, pretty as it is, uses a Byrds song title as an opening line to disguise that he’s rewritten “Walls”.

Highway Companion could have been a lot worse, but it just isn’t memorable. It also wasn’t much of a hit, making the release a year later of a so-called “Special Edition”—two new songs plus demos of two album tracks—more insulting to diehard fans than anything else.

Tom Petty Highway Companion (2006)—2
2007 Special Edition: same as 2006, plus 4 extra tracks

Robyn Hitchcock 1: Black Snake Diamond Role

Robyn Hitchcock is the very model of a cult artist. He’s either loved or ignored, with a 35-year career that’s required a lot of patience on the part of his fans. Luckily, some of those fans work for record companies, so the curious newcomer hasn’t had to look too far to catch up on his best work. However, being the eccentric figure that he is, Robyn hasn’t made it easy to be a completist, taking back nearly as much as he gives. The bulk of his ‘80s catalog has now been reissued twice; the third time around wasn’t necessarily an improvement on the second, as we shall see.

Coming off the formative years with the Soft Boys, Black Snake Diamond Role sounds more like where he’d go than where he’d been. The songs are gentler, if still forced, but for the most part he’d found a style that would suit him for a while.

The piano-driven “Man Who Invented Himself” may or may not be about Syd Barrett, but it sure has a neat beat to it. Very singalongable. “Brenda’s Iron Sledge” has a wonderful snaky punk riff and a beat that sounds like drums being hit with wooden spoons. “Acid Bird” is his first real classic, a microcosm of that unique Hitchcock sound in both title and content.

Unfortunately, not everything else matches those highlights. “Do Policemen Sing?” and “Meat” try too hard to be bizarre, while “City Of Shame” isn’t much more than a poem with secondary music and an unfulfilled melody. “I Watch The Cars” has some promise, but again, he was still finding his way, though the line about eating Weetabix in “Love” (wherein the sound of the ocean is provided by one Tom Dolby) is a good clue where he’d wander.

Rhino’s version of the album was just fine, with such relevant B-sides as the short-story-set-to-music “Happy The Golden Prince”, which isn’t as clever once you’ve solved the allegory. The Yep Roc version repeats four of those bonuses save “Dancing On God’s Thumb” (which is odd, as it was included on the original 1987 CD version of the album) and adds four more tracks from an earlier rarities collection. Both versions start with an alternate mix of “The Man Who Invented Himself” without saxophones, which brings the piano out more.

Robyn Hitchcock Black Snake Diamond Röle (1981)—3
1995 Rhino reissue: same as 1981, plus 5 extra tracks
2007 Yep Roc reissue: same as 1981, plus 8 extra tracks

Big Star 3: Third

The phrase “fractured masterpiece” doesn’t get thrown around a lot, but it aptly describes the album commonly credited to Big Star as either Third or Sister Lovers but usually both. While drummer Jody Stephens is the only other member of the band to appear on the album—even contributing vocals to one of his own compositions—it’s largely an Alex Chilton solo record, recorded in 1974 but not released for four years. And even when it did come out, it appeared on various tiny labels with different track listings. The 1992 version on Rykodisc is considered to be the artist-approved version, with a whopping 19 tracks. (To be precise, it was the sequence the producer decided upon that year, and Alex didn’t say no.)

The left turns Alex took on Radio City are even more extreme on Third/Sister Lovers, going right off the road and into the woods. Instead of tight trio arrangements, the songs exist in ragged, reverb-heavy spaces, played by various session musicians and friends, and some even sporting full string arrangements.

The opening “Kizza Me” sets the mood pretty well. A guitar starts, then wavers, and a vocal struggles to make its point while a piano and bass try to find their way through the murk. (The drums, of course, are spot on.) “Thank You Friends” can be taken either as sincere or sarcastic, depending on your mood. It too ends without certainty. “Big Black Car” is the emotional antithesis of the previous album’s car song—or any car song, for that matter. The song’s pace and delivery belie any possible joy of driving the open road. And then we have a bona fide Christmas song: “Jesus Christ” is the only modern pop song we can think of that would pass muster in a hymnal. A sleepy cover of Lou Reed’s “Femme Fatale” features Steve Cropper on lead guitar, before things pick up a tad on “O, Dana”, which would have incredible hit potential if not for the inscrutable lyrics (example: “I’d rather shoot a woman than a man”) and sloppy playing. But just as we’re starting to cheer up, “Holocaust” closes the first half with one of the darkest songs ever committed to tape.

“Kangaroo” always seems on the verge of falling apart but manages to hold itself long enough to reach an actual conclusion amid the chaos. Another possible hit was torpedoed when Alex changed his lyrics to “Stroke It Noel”, but luckily Jody comes next with the warm and straightforward “For You”. “You Can’t Have Me” brings back some of the angry power pop from #1 Record, setting up a similar closing suite of three songs filled with beauty. “Nightime” wanders the streets of Memphis in innocence (“Caught a glance in your eyes and fell through the skies”) and melancholy (“Get me out of here, get me out of here/I hate it here, get me out of here”). “Blue Moon” is a prayer for affection, then “Take Care” bids a sad adieu.

The “bonus tracks” work within the context of all that has gone before. There are covers—a chaotic “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”, the Kinks’ “Till The End Of The Day” and a haunting “Nature Boy”—and two key originals: the atonal “Downs”, which sounds like three songs playing at once, and the slower than slow “Dream Lover”, wherein our hero nearly falls off the piano while the strings reach for the heights.

Third/Sister Lovers is not for everyone, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that it’s waved around for hipster cred more than it’s enjoyed. But it truly does offer something different with each listen. If one order doesn’t work for you, try another; that’s what shuffle play is for.

The myth of the album only increased once it gained wider distribution, and future archival releases would continue to tease cultists with further sounds and suggestions about how the album came together. 2016 brought forth what could be considered the final word on the album with Complete Third. This three-CD set purports to include every one of Alex’s studio demos for the album, every extant rough mix, ending in the final sequence as dictated by the first test pressing, bolstered by any other tracks on the Ryko set that hadn’t been on said test pressing. Owning the set means having those once-rare tracks for a second or third time, and there’s a whole lotta repetition, but there’s also better perspective for us archivists. To wit, we hear a lot more of Alex’s girlfriend Lesa, who was involved with much of the sessions, and their bombed duet on the Beatles’ “I’m So Tired” provides a good template for what would eventually follow. Moreover, a five-minute track called “Pre-Downs” is only an excerpt of a night’s full of noodling and chaos that ended up on “Downs” proper. It’s worth skipping.

Big Star Third/Sister Lovers (1992)—4
Big Star Complete Third (2016)—3½

Big Star 2: Radio City

With their first album finding little commercial success, Big Star kinda fell apart, but reconvened as a three-piece without Chris Bell once Alex Chilton started writing and recording a few more songs. Consequently, the sound of Radio City is harder, and more unified by one voice.

“O My Soul” is a compact symphony, well-constructed and powerfully sung in basically a guitar-and-drums showcase overdubbed with a wheezy synth. (It’s also pointedly in mono, very much odd for 1974.) Followed by “Life Is White”, which sports a wheezing harmonica over a stumbling rhythm, we have a harbinger of the fractured sound that would dominate the next Chilton project. Andy Hummel’s “Way Out West” (sung by drummer Jody Stephens) and the hobbling “What’s Going Ahn” (one of three songs recorded with a different rhythm section before becoming a Big Star project) are nicely sequenced for balance. “You Get What You Deserve” is a sharp finger-pointing song Ray Davies would have been proud to pen.

“Mod Lang” is fairly dirty sounding, but for power pop greatness, it’s hard to beat “Back Of A Car”, and dig those galloping drum fills. “Daisy Glaze” is another multipart wonder, with mood swings indiscernible lyrically and open to misunderstanding. Credited to all three members, it’s quite the accomplishment. “She’s A Mover” is fairly ordinary boogie, but “September Gurls” is another well-loved power pop nugget, and no, we don’t know what’s up with all the creative spelling throughout these titles. Two basically solo Chilton performances, “Morpha Too” and “I’m In Love With A Girl” seem to come out of nowhere but cap the album perfectly.

Radio City was as much of a commercial dud as the debut was, and the band was pretty much done, though the musicians would continue to create, as we shall soon see. Luckily for those of us who weren’t there the first time, enough bands and critics kept the spirit of Big Star afloat that, in time, the band finally received the acclaim it deserved. Best of all, the first two albums enhance each other so well that their continued existence paired on a single CD makes it an absolute bargain.

Big Star Radio City (1974)—4½

Big Star 1: #1 Record

Hailing from Memphis, Big Star was another one of those bands who seemed to make barely a ripple of a splash at the time, but years later had people falling over themselves in appreciation. In this case, the appreciation is warranted.

In many ways, the hopefully titled #1 Record is the template for what is considered power pop. At a time when Beatlesque songwriting was considered passé, it was left to a few standard bearers raised on the British Invasion to keep it going.

While the first name associated with the band is Alex Chilton, previously known as the gravel-voiced kid in the Box Tops singing “The Letter”, equal if not greater credit should go to Chris Bell, who started the band and wrote a chunk of the songs. (Most every tune is credited “Bell/Chilton”, a la Lennon/McCartney.) His is the first voice we hear, on the edgy yet arena-ready “Feel”. His voice drives “In The Street”, best known in its permutation as the theme from That ‘70s Show, and the equally rocking “Don’t Lie To Me” is just plain fun to yell along to. “My Life Is Right” was written with an earlier collaborator named Tom Eubanks, boosted by some wonderful rolls and fills from drummer Jody Stephens. “Try Again” is a nearly spiritual plea, while “ST 100/6” is a brief if mysterious closer.

Alternated with these throughout are Chilton’s contributions, all just as strong, and surprisingly gentler. “The Ballad Of El Goodo” is another statement of purpose, and provides a balance of sound early on, as does the super-sweet, uncanny ode to being “Thirteen”. “When My Baby’s Beside Me” turns it up for that wonderful anachronistic balance of ‘60s and ‘70s, while “Watch The Sunrise” and “Give Me Another Chance” deliver smart counterparts to Bell’s yearning, the latter complete with Mellotron. The smirk of bassist Andy Hummel’s “The India Song” is stuck right in the middle of the album, and provides a more irreverent nod to their influences.

The descriptions above notwithstanding, #1 Record is expertly sequenced, with production rich with layered guitars both acoustic and electric, plus harmonies galore. They had every right to be proud of it, and would be understandably disappointed when it didn’t sell by the bucketful—Chris Bell particularly.

Big Star #1 Record (1972)—4½