22nd...Dawn of the Summer of Love

Surrealistic Pillow. Four stars.

The popularity of Jefferson Airplane always rather perplexed me. They were, it is true, an epitomizing sixties band, but I never found anything spectacular about them in musicianship, songwriting or anything else. So I concluded it was because of Grace Slick, first lady of rock (I know, I know, there was Janis, but she came from the blues tradition. Note all others at the time were into folk: a la Joan, Judy and Joni... or country). Now imagine my frustration when I heard this record and discovered she only sang two of the eleven tracks! Marty Balin got the job of lead vocals, and actually sounds a lot like a West Coast Paul Simon.

So what has my second listen discovered about one of 1967s most popular releases? Sheer enjoyability. These fellows were early on in the psychedelic movement and were just having a good time, making music and taking drugs - they weren't trying to be anything or make any sweeping statements. They were just a pleasant little San Francisco group. The excess and political posturing would come later.

Track 1, She Has Funny Cars (to the title I say "????"). Opening with drums and harmonies, it quickly reinvents itself as a shuffle. Marty Balin with Grace on counterpoint. Rather than your usual call-and-respond technique, they mix it up, singing different lines in tandem and occasionally harmonizing. The effect is disorienting but neat.

Surrealistic Pillow is primarily a pop record, and Somebody to Love makes for one of the few rockers, and a memorable single. It was written by Grace's brother-in-law, so she sings lead. Brilliant voice, cuts like steel and she projects so well.

My Best Friend is....cute. Dreamy, sunny pop, extremely dated, and Grace is back to being an accent again.

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead guests on lead guitar for Today, an extremely beautiful ballad. Alright, it's sentimental and rhymes "you" and "true" more than necessary, but it still makes for a lovely moment.

Comin' Back to Me is Today Part 2. Replacing percussion with recorder, it's even more evocative. Garcia plays again and the lyric is an improvement. An acoustic gem.

3/5 of a Mile in Ten Seconds gets back to a rock foundation. At the last, the random title is shouted out but the song actually has something to do with freaks and the price of pot. Cool riff.

D.C.B.A. - 25 (Whose idea was that for a name?) is a pleasant, inconsequential California folk-rock number. You know, with the jangly guitars of the Byrds/Mamas and Papas....

How Do You Feel is more sunny harmonized pop, which blends nicely with the rest of the album.

Embryonic Journey is just one finger picking guitar played by band member Jorma Kaukonen. First song he ever composed, purely from the folk tradition, no rock and roll to it. Very short, yet a memorable addition.

The classic White Rabbit is next. Combining Alice in Wonderland with drugs and some kind of Spanish march, it drips with atmosphere for its two brief minutes. That is due to Grace, who wrote it. I can forget the sixties lyric and just savour the way she sings it. Mojo Magazine named it the greatest drug song ever recorded, for what that's worth.

Plastic Fantastic Lover finishes things off in the rock camp. I thought it was about a robot, but it turns out Marty had the television in mind. As the title indicates, the lyric is some kind of a mouthful.

The bubblegum pink cover strongly indicates Surrealistic Pillow as a pop record, and that's pretty much what you'll find. Oh, and notice the glum mop-top holding a banjo? Notice it has no strings? False advertising, or, to put it more kindly, a stylistic addition. No banjos were used in the making of this record.

I lump Jefferson Airplane in with Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel and The Zombies. Make a pot of tea, put up your feet and smile.

(Next week, I promise I'll review something frightfully obscure again. It'll be after Christmas then, so here's a Merry Christmas to all my devoted followers and to those who just happen by. Cheers!)

21st...Overlong review of an overlong CD

London Calling. Four stars.

First just let me say that in all the genres huddled under the rock umbrella, my favorites are folk/singer-songwriters and intellectual art-rock (Bowie, early Eno, Roxy Music, etc). I'm telling you this just so's you'll know how much store you want to set by this review.

1979's double album saw the introduction of post-punk and pointed the way for the Clash selling out. This is an artistic statement, you can hear ska, reggae, horns, honest to god pop tunes strewn across the record. It's all carried off well, but it means that, as far as punk was concerned, the Clash were making a fast exit.

Like all double albums, it's got filler. All the songs are short, making the weaker songs less noticeable (queue up Physical Graffiti), so taken as a whole, it mostly works.

Okay, song by song...Brace yourselves!

London Calling is a pull-out-the-stops apocalypse song. Flooding, nuclear destruction...heck, even zombies. Joe Strummer (lead singer) sounds quite pleased with all this, possibly because Beatlemania doesn't survive the experience...

Brand New Cadillac was an extra the band used to warm up before recording the serious stuff. It's dumb, basically rock and roll, and funny if you're in the right mood.

Jimmy Jazz is one of several songs dealing with criminals of one stripe or another. Horns show up alongside the guitar bridge, and Strummer sounds like he's ad-libbing through most of it. Not bad, not memorable.

Hateful is not a punk diatribe. It's about a drug addict and has a fabulous chorus.

Rudie Can't Fail is also gifted with a memorable chorus, and is driven by the brass section. Reggae inflected standout.

Spanish Bombs features grand, soaring guitar as the lyric looks to the Spanish Civil War, including a few lines in the language. When I first heard the CD two years ago, this was my favorite track, telling you how accessible it is.

The Right Profile is about the actor Montgomery Clift. This musically chaotic piece follows him down the drain. Hardly pleasant (that's the point) and Strummer's diction is really, truly horrible.

Lost in the Supermarket is gentle, a pop tune. Mick Jones, the other half of the songwriting team, sings it. The lyric is good and it's damn catchy...but it drops the ball in the second half by repeating the chorus over and over and over...Must repeat six times, rendering the song rather tedious.

We return to rock on Clampdown. Anarchy. The Establishment. You know the drill. High quality tune.

The Guns of Brixton is the real reggae moment. Paul Simonon wrote and sang it. An ominous story of civil unrest, it's one of the standouts, and that's saying something, since I've never liked reggae.

So, that's part one. It's all quite interesting, never excessive and surprising well paced. Part two?

Wrong 'Em Boyo is a ska-inflected pop song. It sounds like nothing so much as Madness. It's a riff on the traditional Stagger Lee murder ballad.

Death or Glory is archetypal from the title in. It's pretty good, and makes me curious to hear their first two albums.

Koka Kola has another strong melody, and at two minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome. In fact, it is my own favorite on London Calling.

The Card Cheat has all the instruments recorded twice to get a bigger sound, and includes piano and brass to make it swing.

Lover's Rock is the weakest track. Mildly interesting, but it drags out into a dull coda again. Superfluous; outshone by the rest.

Back to business with Four Horsemen. No, it is not another apocalypse song. Actually, I'm not sure what it is about, but never mind that.

By this point, the album is unbearable to me if not broken into two days of listening. So we come to I'm Not Down, a repetitive, uplifting little tune. Verse, riff, chorus, rinse and repeat is a mite bit predictable.

Last proper song is Revolution Rock, which is a misleading title. The brass calls up ghosts of Herb Alpert for God's sake! Though the lyric would be unacceptable in his world. Judging from the lyric sheets, I'd guess Joe Strummer was very fond of ad-libbing...

Train in Vain is an odd inclusion, a single tossed on at the last possible minute, so the original album sleeve didn't even mention it. I'd enjoy it more if it wouldn't play back in my head for the next 24 hours.

Okay, so it has more strengths than weaknesses. It makes a cohesive artistic statement and judging from what I've heard about Sandinista and Combat Rock, they didn't have anything to say afterwards.

If my review hasn't convinced you that this isn't a punk record, you can see my statement backed up by the cover art, which is both an homage to Elvis Presley and a shot recalling The Who more than anything else.

In conclusion, I'm pleased with London Calling, though I'd hardly call it one of the greatest records of all time, and the length deters me from taking it off the shelf for another two years.

20th...Roxy's second

(Bonus points to anyone who's already noticed that this is my third "For" somebody or other)

For Your Pleasure. Five stars.

So, 1973 gave us the last Roxy Music album before Eno split, and it takes the darkness hinted at on the prior's Ladytron and lets it loose. From album cover in, this is the excessive, even decadent expansion of everything originally presented.

To start, the camp is campier. Do the Strand is essentially a joke song, and wears off as all such numbers will if overplayed. But man, the bridge is killer and the band cooks... Even on silly throwaways the band puts in a five star performance.

Beauty Queen is a poetic, strangely touching end-of-love song. Romance in Ferry's world always seems expensive, glamorous and entirely superficial, yet he really wrings the pathos out of it. This is probably the best song on here, as the band gets to rock out, and Ferry's ballad shines through with fabulous turns of phrase. And his voice is unmatchable.

Strictly Confidential is a macabrely rendered deathbed lament (every songwriter has got one of those inside them). It creeps slowly upward, becoming more and more otherworldly. All details are left to the imagination.

Editions of You is an all out, chaotic slice of art-rock with more extreme camp and a great trade-off among lead instruments.

Then there's In Every Dream Home a Heartache, more like spoken word than song. It's a peek into an empty space, a world where the excessively rich have every convenience but no soul. So (the narrator at least) turns to the gothic and perverse right in the middle of suburbia. When the music does kick in it's worth the wait, even though it contains a false stop (and I really hate those).

The Bogus Man is further creepiness, but the least effecting work overall. Oh, it's loungy and strangely upbeat; the brief lyric is about an emotionally stunted man and simmers with undercurrents of stalking and violence. That lasts about four minutes and then we're fed minute after minute (five in all) of instrumental noodling. It doesn't build or go anywhere terribly interesting, it just proceeds aimlessly along. Why?

Grey Lagoons is underrated. A bit celebratory, but it, like Beauty Queen, brims with energy and isn't camp. It's not as good as the earlier track, just because the lyrics are a bit lightweight.

And Eno, I hear you ask? Oh, he's running riot on the title track, a rather sweet last minute note. It does it's fair share of noodling too, but coming at the end and mimicking a sunrise, it goes somewhere and fades out where you can't follow it.

Roxy Music would never sound like this again. Take heart though; their second phase was equal to the first, though only lasting another two albums. Then they caught the most unfortunate of rock's maladies...they sold out. But all those stories will come later. This week, my concern is For Your Pleasure, one of the best CDs they ever made.