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.

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.

19th...Lyrical craftsmanship

For the Roses. Four stars.

1972s For the Roses was supposed to be Joni Mitchell's farewell to the music industry. Uncomfortable with her progressing popularity, she released this album and took a relatively short hiatus, returning in 1974.

So in my mind, this record marks her farewell more to the heart-on-the-sleeve singer-songwriter style she'd epitomized on Blue, and the groundwork for later obscuritantism. (I don't believe that's a real word)

Banquet is the uncompromising start-up, taking a simple metaphor of life as a banquet and expanding it into something just a titch more complicated. The beauty of much of the album is found in the structure. Joni knew how to arrange a song, even a simple piano ballad.

Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire is as impenetrable as the title makes it sound. Jazz inflections on a guitar track, a beautiful melody if one has the patience to tease it out, her voice turning hollow and spooky and a lyric far too deep on a thematic level for me to understand.

Barangrill is much easier, thematically and melodically. The denizens of a Bar and Grill are lovingly described, while woodwinds and reeds highlight a memorable tune. It is pleasant and easy to overplay, since there isn't a whole lot underneath the charm.

Back to piano with Lesson in Survival, and back to the seaside painted in Banquet. Journalistic free verse, set to a vague tune. It details the straining elements of a relationship. "I came in as bright/as a neon light/and I burned out/right there before him." Moving story, excellently crafted and immediately forgettable.

It shifts superbly into Let the Wind Carry Me, detailing the strain between a rock n roll rebel and her parents.

For the Roses moves back to guitar and is an informed, detailed song about life as a singer-songwriter. After the last couple, the melody is especially nice and the imagery proves how adept Joni Mitchell is with a lyric.

See You Sometime is a continuation of it. And it occurs to me that I'm not recommending her as being fun to listen to. In fact, the singer-songwriter genre is not replete with light-hearted self deprecation and absurdities. No, it's like art, recommended as thought-provoking material. It's just not good time music.

Where was I? Electricity; another simple metaphor, faulty wiring = a relationship. It's rather touching, just for that simplicity.

Harmonica! You know this one. It's You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio. Got into the Top 25, without benefit of a chorus, and it is a sweet little love song. It makes me smile. Oh, and it's Nash supplying the harmonica.

Blonde in the Bleachers is a vignette, brief but interesting. Stills gets on this one as the whole rock n roll band that invades the coda.

Woman of Heart and Mind is the most scathing song, though the delivery is merely contemplative.

Judgement of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig's Tune) is certainly the most ambitious of the lot. Obviously, the subject is Beethoven. It settles into a longish bridge, but the actual song is good, though it doesn't wrap up so much as pieter out.

Verdict? A good job all around. Not the study in excellence of Blue, nor her best collection of songs, since a lot of them only dimly register on a melodic level. Yet Joni's capability and strength of craftsmanship make it a splendid continuation record, though I wouldn't recommend it as a good starting point if you haven't heard any of her other work. She's got a good voice too.