29th...Pop music's deepest ruminations

Bookends. Five stars.

Looked at now, from a distance, I can recognise that I was too kind in my assessment of Bridge Over Troubled Water, and I like to believe it would never have swept the Grammys if Bookends hadn't preceded it in 1968. Excellent production is on offer here as well, along with a far stronger set of songs. The first half forms one of the most cohesive concept albums I've yet come across.

Serious statements in the sixties seem to have been left to singer-songwriters and the commercially unsuccessful. And the focus was generally on the young. I have found only two songwriters who paused to express concern for the aged: one was Paul McCartney's Eleanor Rigby, and the other was Paul Simon. Which brings us back to Bookends.

It starts and ends with the Bookends Theme, only 32 seconds of wistful, autumnal acoustic guitar. It is extremely haunting and beautiful.

Moog synthesiser shoves it aside and the controlled cacophony of Save the Life of My Child gets started. Concern for the kids, expressed through the scenario of a crowd watching a boy on a building, thinking of jumping off. There's a certain sense of sarcasm in the muttered asides, and a sense of the lack of understanding between the generations.

It is overtaken by America, a lyric without a single rhyme. As far as design goes, this is equal to the best of Bridge, but the lyric is where it excels. No rhymes! I can't get over that fact, and the amount of imagery and emotions packed into a three minute bus ride song is great.

The story of youth ends with Overs, a deliberately spartan, unbearably precise account of a relationship in decay and the sudden threatening appearance of time on the horizon. The end result of Simon's lonesome meditation is immensely poignant.

Garfunkel's presence is actually felt on this record, as he does more than harmonise. And his most important contribution is not musical at all; it is Voices of Old People, a collage taken form a set of interviews he made with anonymous men and women. They talk of photographs, illness, children, the idea of home.... This bridge is essential for the emotional impact of the last two songs.

Old Friends is overpowered by strings, but the essential, crystalline vision is untouched. Perfect musical accompaniment to the voice collage.

And just when the melody has dissolved into the string section, Bookends Theme returns, accompanied by a simple statement that encapsulates all that's gone before....

I recommend pausing for a breather before side 2 starts (you'd have had to do that anyway, back in the vinyl age). It allows proper distance, as side 2 is extremely jarring. Simon let the audience off the hook and just stuck on a bunch of singles, much like Magical Mystery Tour, incidentally. Fakin' It is lighter fare, with a delightful guitar lick, but after the others, it's really appreciated at this point!

The jazzy Punky's Dilemma is about (you'll never believe this) Boysenberry jam, Kellogg's Cornflakes and getting the draft. It is one of Simon's "precious" moments. Very child-like, so if you get all sophisticated, you'll groan (as I have done on occasion). Try and enjoy it anyway.

Mrs. Robinson was the big hit, the tie-in for a movie, and the longest song at a whopping four minutes. It's very wholesome (cupcakes, Joe DiMaggio and Jesus wholesome). Ironic how lightweight it is, considering how much Simon can fit into two minutes. Nice though it is, it's the weakest track.

A Hazy Shade of Winter is the opposite, leaping out at you via a fast, hard-edged delivery and an endless set of excellent rhymes. Man, for this duo it almost rocks, and it ties back into the earlier themes interestingly.

Two minutes for that one, and two minutes for At the Zoo, which picks up instantly. The use of sound affects is genius. The subject? Orwellian styling of animals, but done Paul Simon style, so the result is ridiculously lighthearted. I think it's hilarious, but that's me.

An irreverent end? Perhaps, but I view it as a kindness. An entire album of deep emotional resonance would be almost too much.

I haven't heard the earlier works yet. But I'm gonna go on record here and say that this is Simon and Garfunkel's best album and among my favorite CDs.

28th...Dance music for a night at the Club

You Had It Coming. Four stars.

To date, this CD from 2000 and '73s collaboration with Bogert and Appice are the only Jeff Beck I've been exposed to. That's it. 56 years old, making noise on the guitar, utilising techno and with exactly one non-instrumental track, Jeff Beck acknowledged straight-off that this CD is of interest only to "a very narrow market."

Earthquake defines the whole sound. It would seem your usual repetitive, electronic groove with canned voice, but for Jeff's loud, essentially improvised guitar. This one is like the chase theme in a Bourne-type thriller - pursuer and pursued dodging through the crowds, the breathless pause when one has seemed to give the other the slip, then Bam! they're off again.

Roy's Toy uses occasional (loud) spurts of engine noise to set off and distinguish one of the most melodically intricate of the "Club" tracks and therefore one of my favorites. It reinvents itself frequently, sustaining replay value.

More noisy guitar on Dirty Mind, which uses a woman's fast breathing as percussion (!?) Talk about gimmicks that fail. When the loop is buried and turned off, the music actually gets good.

Old blues chestnut Rollin' and Tumblin' gets a thoroughly modern, rocking treatment, guesting Imogen Heap. She's got a good voice; makes it a good song.

Things finally slow down with Nadia, in which Jeff turns the electric guitar into a world music instrument. The rendering of India into sound is exquisite considering that no traditional instruments are utilised. Standout.

We return to our great night at the Club with Loose Cannon, a grungier entry and the longest track. If you liked the earlier tunes, you'll like this entry. What more can be said?

Rosebud has an almost country-rock thing going on, but it is problematically repetitive. Nothing happens. "Oh, here's a riff. We'll use that."

Left Hook is the last of the same stuff. Wonderfully interesting guitar, so of course it's good. The fast paced fadeout if a lot of fun.

The tour de force is Blackbird/Suspension. Blackbird is a quiet, one minute duet with the same. A cherished moment whose shortness adds to its sweetness, and the simplicity of the concept adds to its elegance.

Suspension is the drifting end note. Memories fished out while it plays become extraordinarily vivid, making it one of the most haunting instrumentals I've ever heard.

Short review, I'm afraid, but the sameness is a flaw. You Had It Coming spends most of its time in one place, doing one thing. What variety there is makes one hanker for a little more. If a Club isn't handy, play it while housecleaning.

27th...Unshakeable confidence

Young Americans. Four and a half stars.

With the possible exception of an album of traditional Nigerian folk songs, I'm not sure David Bowie could have found a stranger direction to pool his musical resources in. You've got to admire him for the effort. This guy ain't black, he ain't even from America and yet he undertakes a whole record in Philadelphia Soul style.

In 1975, David was already on the road to Thin White Duke hell, but Young Americans gives indication only of his overwhelming confidence, his love of his own voice and its ability to do seemingly anything. On this record he eschews the lyric in favor of using his voice as an instrument.

The other note is that of the band: keeping Garson on piano, with Carlos Alomar (who'd become a semi-permanent band member), a young Luther Vandross guesting, John Lennon permeating the record... That's just the tip of the iceberg. Sax player is David Sanborn, a well respected session man. Look at the credentials: almost everybody is somebody.

Long and the short of it: the band is hot. On the money. It cooks.

Title track is a five minute epic, best lyric for sure. A sprawling, rapid fire narrative taking in multiple points of view, a string of American cliches, a glory in American cheapness, American culture, and so on. The delivery is awe-inspiringly fast, and if you play the song back to back with Ziggy Stardust, you would hardly believe it's the same guy.

Everything slows down for Win, morose and uplifting. Low register singing, snatches of poetry, band matching him step for step, singers complimenting without overtaking him...perfection.

Fascination is the funkiest track, putting the pace back into high gear. Luther Vandross is included here, and this is a first and last in the Bowie catalogue in as much as the backup singers lead the charge. Lyric hasn't much merit, but it's just an excuse for his voice to leap up and down the scale, sometimes belting it out, sometimes whispering. And it makes for seriously funky party music.

Pacing is great too. Right slows back down to a gorgeous simmer. The melodic hook is excellent, but the middle of the song is devoted to an improvisational give and take exchange. As a song, it's lightweight; as a piece of the album, it's absolutely necessary.

Somebody Up There Likes Me has a lengthy saxophone intro, showing off the band. This one is the real tour de force, the band pushing all the right buttons and David using the more interesting lyric as a vehicle again, shifting for every verse, sometimes every line. How he did this without pausing to gasp for breath, I don't know.

Well, that's the heart and soul of Young Americans. Across the Universe is included next. Its construction doesn't fit, thematically it doesn't fit, and the song is sung furiously, as if he was trying to hammer it into the mike. The vocal workout is in fact its only saving grace.

I have no problem with Can You Hear Me, except that it is totally forgettable. Story is one of those "come back, I'm brokenhearted" pieces. Generally speaking, that's an unusual theme for David Bowie. Vocalisation again the saving grace.

Coda is Fame. Unfortunately, everybody has heard this one to death. First No. 1 hit in America, got Lennon on backups, riff is funky as hell, lyric rips its subject up nicely. First hearing it at fourteen, I felt cool just listening. Sadly, like Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, I promptly played it to death and all I get out of it now is a gentle nostalgia. Alas....

So the last three tracks are distinctly weaker than the rest of it. Also, the lyrics aren't his best, though to be fair, that's not really their point. Want the best offerings in that department, go check out Hunky Dory or Aladdin Sane.

Great stuff most of the time though, and a superb way to kill the glam rock ghost that had pursued him all the way to Diamond Dogs.

Incidentally, Young Americans currently wins my poll for CD collection freak. Owning no soul, funk or disco CDs, there is NOTHING I can partner this CD to. It stands alone.

26th...An album of stories

Never for Ever. Four and a half stars.

This has to be the most feminine CD I've ever heard. My first Kate Bush record, and note it does not delve deepest into the female psyche (Katell Keineg wins that prize), but it has a uniquely feminine flair to it that I've never heard elsewhere...the pseudo-operatic range, the delicate arrangements....

Anyway, 1980 saw Kate Bush as a successful artist, idiosyncratic, challenging and wildly ambitious. Ambition creates magic on some of the tracks, and absolute failure elsewhere.

Babooshka leads off, a hit single and it reminds me of Joni Mitchell in its forcing the melody to adhere to the lyrics intricacies, rather than the usual way round. The chorus is surprisingly ferocious, the story fascinates and the music makes various creative accents.

It makes a bracing intro, segueing perfectly into Delius (Song of Summer), featuring bass for contrast. Referencing classical music, though Kate's imagistic lyric is hardly audible. A delicate atmosphere is crafted with her voice at an exquisite, faraway high pitch, and it is one of my favorites.

Blow Away is a failure, though I'm not sure why. Personal preference says the melody clunks and her delivery is prissy beyond endurance.

All We Ever Look For gets back on the right course. This one is magic, pure and simple. Intricate melodic interplays, her voice breathtaking and the whistling riff infectiously catchy.

The delicate structures continue on Egypt, a love letter to the same. At the two and a half minute mark it makes an exhilarating shift from whimsical to gothic. The magic is most definitely at work on this cut!

The Wedding List (lyric based on The Bride Wore Black, a film) deals with the gruesome scenario of the groom shot at his wedding and the bride out for revenge. Kate clearly doesn't mean a word of it; she sings like a teenager with an attitude problem over an upbeat melody. Take it seriously, already! Don't make pop songs out of that stuff.

Violin is much better. Nothing fancy, just a manic rock track featuring violin heavily (duh!). It's fun in a silly way. Lyric says nothing, but Kate must have had a blast. Get into it and it carries you along.

The Infant Kiss (another film reference, this time The Innocents) returns to seriousness. A governess is frightened and disconcerted by her attraction to her young male charge. The guilt, fear and confusion is plainly depicted, and Kate's spin on this story is far more subtle.

Night Scented Stock exists merely as a choral bridge between The Infant Kiss and Army Dreamers. Brilliant for that, as a song it doesn't stand on its own.

Army Dreamers is in waltz time, catching instant attention. An indirect, strangely moving account of a dead soldier's family. Told with constant slang and in a sweeter-than-thou voice, backed with male vocalists (as on Babooshka/Delius), it is another moment where ambition pays off.

It's actually only a warm-up for Breathing, Never for Ever's masterpiece. Narrated by a child in the womb breathing in nuclear fallout, it is so harrowing I can hardly stand it. A miniature song suite, including a broadcast describing the sight of an explosion. I do not know if it is a famous broadcast or not. Then there's Roy Harper in the background at the climax whilst Kate loses all coherency and the child dies (or why else would her voice cut out so abruptly?). The crowning achievement.

So despite a preoccupation with the weird and macabre, which could easily have turned more than The Wedding List into a gimmick, this album succeeds on most fronts. Kate is first and foremost a storyteller, and this set of stories is nearly first rate.

25th...Paying my respects

Safe as Milk. Four and a half stars.

In recorded form, music is a kind of miracle to me, preserving an immortality, a sound removed and preserved. It is a jolt back to reality when I hear that one of these immortal voices has died.

As I did last year for Lena Horne, I tracked down a CD to pay my respects to Don Van Vliet, alias Captain Beefheart. I'd heard the debut was the best starting point, so I sat down with Safe as Milk expecting something really bizarre....

The opener, Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do, is just mildly eccentric blues-rock (all the songs are really short by the way). I was bemused, but one thing can be said: the Magic Band was fabulous. Captain Beefheart may have had to sack half the assembly, but the end result of such perfectionism is immediately noticeable.

Zig Zag Wanderer continues in the same vein. Here's me thinking, why wasn't this record a hit? That's classic sixties guitar in just two minutes!

Things get even more normal with Call On Me, the lyric helping out. I'm thinking he'd make a great R&B singer....

Then finally! Six minutes into the CD, Dropout Boogie kicks off. The song is drenched in buzziness, yet contains a light and airy bridge. Juxtaposition is genius.

So Glad runs off the rails. I think fast Doo-wop is great stuff, but this is sad, slower than molasses and three minutes long. Also, spare me rhymes of "glad" and "sad."

Back on track with Electricity. Space age theremin, the Captain's voice (it's not pretty, but it sure is different), footstomping infection in the music and enough overlapping structures to insure a long playback span.

"The following tone is a reference tone recorded at out operating level," so says Richard Perry the producer, amongst more space age sounds. Then Yellow Brick Road, which, aside from a hollow, abrasive "chorus," is a delightful little pop tune. Ah, now things are properly strange.

Abba Zaba... Childlike rhymes, faux African textures, appealing melody, musical bridge keeping it from repetitiveness. Enjoyable even while wondering where such a crazy idea came from.

Blues-rock gets another airing on Plastic Factory, only this time it's heavy duty, grubby and worn, just the way it should be.

Where There's Woman is also in the blues framework. He'd have made a great blues singer too. This song's good but not at all odd or out there.

That lapse is fixed with Grown So Ugly, a vaguely amusing tale that's kind of throwaway, but still interesting.

The record is now pegged beyond doubt, you think. Which is why Autumn's Child is at the end to stun you. It's a ballad. Well, recognizably Beefheart, but still a ballad. Works as a prototype to the bleeding heart memories of Tom Waits' ballads. At four minutes, it's the most involved song, ending the record on a high artistic note and using theremin to excellent effect.

Oh, did I mention Ry Cooder's presence on guitar? Well respected name might mean something to the readers, but I don't know him myself.

My first Captain Beefheart record. I like it a lot, but will there be another? You see, it is Safe as Milk's glibness, the lightness of touch despite the perfectionism, that charms me. Does Trout Mask Replica, for instance, retain that? Alas, I do not know.

24th...A reward of grace

Desertshore. Five stars.

There are few records one could classify as entirely unique, but 1970s Desertshore is one of them. Produced by John Cale, Nico again unveils an entire world for you, but it couldn't be further from the coffee house atmosphere of Chelsea Girl. This landscape is windswept, desolate, expansive, European in the shadow of Bach and the troubadours at their most somber.

Nico wrote all her own material at this point and played harmonium. Cale did the rest, and the resulting creation is only 29 minutes, but what a half hour it gives you...

Janitor of Lunacy eases you into Nico's world with waves of sound that could be throwbacks to the era of Visigoths or Teutonic Knights. She still has a technically unlovely voice, but she sings as if from a great distance in time and space.

The Falconer starts with gentle percussion and piano; you can almost see people filing into church. 40 hypnotic seconds later, Nico changes the dynamic. Organ and harmonium wax and wane, the percussion turns ominous. It's Gothic, you understand it and then the gentle piano returns to haunting effect. Is the song a reassuring one? Who is the "falconier?" What mystery is being enacted here?

Mystery is the key to the album, and you won't find a single answer to the lyrical enigmas present. My Only Child is nearly a Capella with choral singing. Sound is used merely to emphasize the "morning/evening" passages.

One minute is then given to her son Ari, singing Le Petit Chevalier. It is hardly long enough to be more than a curiosity, yet it forms a timely break from the Germanic tones and the melody is quite beautiful.

Cale gets out the violin for Abschied, which Nico sings in her native tongue. Controlled turbulence and the avant-garde mixed with melodicism.

Afraid is driven by piano and stately strings. She repeats every line. It isn't at all frightening, unlike Abschied, and comes closest to Chelsea Girl accessibility. A pool of calm in this strange record.

Mutterlein returns to German. In many ways a compound of Janitor, Abschied and My Only Child. Heaviest song, with the continuous tap-tap-tapping that puts me in mind of a death-watch beetle....

All That Is My Own is a fitting coda, with her spoken word prayer standing out. "He who knows/may pass on/the road unknown/and meet me on the desertshore..." There's a chaotic quality that appeals after all the more rigid structures gone before, and a fitting sense of pride; ownership in the strange land she's created.

This is dark and somber, it is true, yet distant. The listener looks on, but is not invited in; denied a sense of familiarity. This music will not make your heart bleed. Nor will you be thinking "oh! those posers! Selling more doom and gloom music...."

Desertshore is simply something else. Transporting, meditative, ahead of its time (1970?) and, considering that I, who usually flit from one rock artist to another, now want to absorb the sounds of Bach, probably mind expanding as well.

23rd...Purists will scoff

September Songs. Four and a half stars.

Another exception to my "no compilations" rule in reviewing, because you won't find half of this material anywhere else, and it's easier to get it here.

To clear the history, this is the soundtrack the music/art film by Larry Weinstein, which was itself inspired by the Hal Wilner 1985 Kurt Weill tribute album Lost in the Stars, which I would love to hear. Wilner also helped construct this tribute album.

Now Kurt Weill was a German composer who also took in the mediums of cabaret, jazz...in a word, popular songs. He collaborated several times with poet/playwright Bertolt Brecht (most notably in the Threepenny Opera), and after settling in America, amazingly, while his music lost radicalism, lyrical quality did not go down.

This overview came out in 1997 and contains (in almost 70 minutes!) a reasonable overview, from traditional versions in German, to modern updated spins that will offend the purists. If you want the real Kurt Weill, go hunt up some Lotte Lenya recordings.

Introductions over, let's look at the songs...

Mack the Knife is the signature song from Threepenny, picked up by Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and others. Funny, since it details the (Many) victims of a murderer. Of course, Nick Cave sings it here, with his usual histrionic aplomb. The backing band is different from the Bad Seeds and supplies demented, woozy brass.

We get PJ Harvey next, doing a standout spin on Brecht's poem Ballad of the Soldier's Wife. The lyric is ingenious, as the soldier sends clothing back from each European city he's encamped at. Her voice and the music carry off the idea with drama and finesse.

David Johansen gets together with some others and runs through Alabama Song. This one's popularity astonishes me. Herky jerky rhythms, lousy lyrics (proof that even poets misfire, and what the hell was he writing about America for anyway?) and on this one, a prissy falsetto girl in backups. I've never the Doors version, but Bowie's was godawful, so I don't hold out much hope.

Youkali Tango is a high class, traditional version. Sung by opera soprano Teresa Stratas, backed only by piano and accordion. Her voice is all that really matters and is suitably incredible.

Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet keep things old-fashioned. Lost in the Stars comes from one of Weill's American musicals, and while it is theatrical, Elvis does a good job with a touching song.

Lotte Lenya hardly pauses for breath, leaps right into Threepenny's Pirate Jenny. I wish I knew German, as this old cabaret tune sounds fascinating.

With that story over, we get a lengthy introduction to the classic Speak Low, courtesy of Charlie Haden's excellent upright bass. Ogden Nash wrote the lyric (how he of nonsense verse managed it, I'll never know), but what a surprise when the piano slowly enters the picture and then an old recording of Kurt Weill himself singing it! His accent as he sings English, the far off, dim sound of the recording and the simple fact of its antiquity drive home the meaning of the song even better than the words.

Returning to The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (from whence came Alabama) we get O Heavenly Salvation, as interpreted by the Persuasions. A Capella, though it hardly registers, as there is nothing missing. Real gospel, singing a hymn of thanks to God.

Betty Carter is one of the few names on the CD I draw a complete blank at. Her Lonely House (from Street Scene, to which Langston Hughes contributed this lyric) is a whopping seven minutes of acute loneliness. Her jazz arrangement and astonishing voice make this one of the most evocative and sad tracks.

Teresa Stratas is favoured with an unnecessary reprise, and picks up the pace with Surabaya Johnny. It comes from a lesser known Weill/Brecht collaboration. She sounds like she's saying goodbye to Johnny, and runs through a bunch of moods with that voice, but also comes across as an actress, taking away sincerity.

From the same piece (Happy End) Mary Margaret O'Hara arranges Furchte dich nicht. It is in English, with free-form jazz and a completely demented vocal. I don't know a thing about this woman, but this one tips straight over into avant-garde.

Emotional finale comes with eight minutes of September Song as done by Lou Reed. A ballad in electric guitar tackling the same heavy theme of "time" as Speak Low, only written by Maxwell Anderson (who wrote Lost in the Stars). Sublime.

Then comes a brief coda: the original, fuzzy recording of Mack the Knife, as sung by Bertolt Brecht himself. Priceless. Even following Lou Reed, is this ever good. Full circle.

The problem of pacing appears at the end. William S. Burroughs reads What Keeps Mankind Alive? It should have followed O'Hara, being avant-garde, as befits a work performed by the Selfhaters Orchestra. Supremely pessimistic (realistic, you might say) and Brecht would probably be pleased to have it as the end, but I just find it off-putting.

Okay, so if Alabama and Surabaya were chopped out, and Burroughs moved to before or after O'Hara, this would be perfect. As is, still an excellent CD, great for a bohemian crowd, great for a fire lit night all alone, great for an introduction to the music of Kurt Weill.